The Road Ahead

Sadly, we are ceasing the sale of new Hosted Exchange services with immediate effect (20th September 2022). Hosted Exchange services for existing customers will be discontinued on the 15th November 2022.

This is not a decision we have made lightly nor wish to have made. Regrettably, our Hosted Exchange service provider is substantially increasing costs for the second year running and it is no longer financially viable for us to continue to offer Hosted Exchange services.

We have attempt to find alternative providers within the UK, but without any success.

We will be contacting all affected customers this week and will work with them to find a different provider or an alternative solution.

We will shortly begin migrating Hosted Exchange 2010 mailboxes to Hosted Exchange 2016. In the next week or so, we will be contacting individual Hosted Exchange 2010 customers to discuss and arrange a suitable date for migration.

Migration will occur on an agreed date between 20:00 and 06:00 BST and will require some client and DNS settings to be changed. In the case of the former, any device that currently connects to an Exchange 2010 mailbox may need to have one or two server addresses changed. If we are responsible for managing a customer's domain (i.e. it is registered with us), we will make the necessary DNS changes unless agreed otherwise. If a domain is outside of our control, we will distribute details of the required DNS changes.

Our Hosted Exchange allows full collaboration services to Android phones including full mail, calendar and contact synchronisation using Microsoft's ActiveSync. We have recently updated our Knowledgebase step-by-step guides on setting up Hosted Exchange on Android smartphones and tablets. There are separate articles for Hosted Exchange 2010, 2013 and 2016:

• Hosted Exchange 2010
• Hosted Exchange 2013
• Hosted Exchange 2016

If you are using a 3rd party mail app, the generic settings are available in the separate knowledgebase article Generic Settings for Hosted Exchange on Android Devices.

In October, Microsoft announced changes to UK pricing that will take take effect from 1st January 2017. The reasons given for the price increase is to harmonise UK pricing with the euro level pricing in the EU/EFTA region and the reduced value of the pound against the dollar in recent months.

From 1st January 2017, the prices for all Microsoft Cloud Services including Office 365. Azure, Dynamics 365 etc. will increase by 22%. However, because many of these services are price-protected for the term of 12-month subscription, the price change will only occur at renewal. For example, if you took out a new Office 365 subscription in September 2016, the price you pay will remain the same until September 2017, after which the price for the subscription will increase in line with current levels.

Similarly, Hosted Exchange prices will also increase, but by a smaller amount. From 1st January 2017, Hosted Exchange prices will increase by 12%.

These price increases will impact all suppliers of Microsoft cloud services in the UK including those purchase directly from Microsoft.

Our Hosted Exchange mailboxes are bigger - much bigger. If our standard 50GB is not large enough, we now offer upto a massive 125GB mailbox.

Hosted Exchange is the cost effective solution to exploiting enterprise communications systems without the expense of costly IT infrastructure.

Also, in light of the recent European rule on US companies using Safe Harbour, it is reassuring to know that our Hosted Exchange data is guaranteed to be stored in the UK.