May 30

Written by: Mike Temporale
Friday, May 30, 2008 8:00pm

Mobile email on a Windows Mobile device really needs an Exchange backend to make it shine. Sure, you can sync mail from your desktop Outlook via ActiveSync and then reply and compose messages from the device, but you have to wait until the next time you connect to that computer before the message actually get sent. So that’s not really useful. There’s another option of setting up the account to connect directly from the device over the air to a backend server. This is a pretty nice solution, but it doesn’t sync contacts or calendar. It’s only good for sending and receiving email. Exchange is the only solution that provides access to email over the air and will sync your contacts and calendar at the same time. So your desktop is the same as your phone - all the time.

For the longest time I have been using the second option - syncing email directly from the device against a backend mail server. The reason I’ve been using this option is partly due to the fact that I can only have one Exchange account per device and I have a couple accounts that I check from my phone making it hard to pick which account is the most important and needs the direct push / always on functionality offered by Exchange. The other reason I haven’t been using Exchange is that I’ve been planning to setup my own server and go the do-it-yourself route. That’s been the plan for a couple years now. Unfortunately, there’s always something that got in the way and I’m still no where near ready to setup and manage my own server. Enough is enough - it’s time to get on the Exchange wagon.

So now the question becomes which hosting provider should I go with? There’s a number of companies offering hosted Exchange service for a small monthly fee. Perhaps on of the more popular companies is 4Smartphone, but there are plenty of others like 1and1, Exchange Mail Hosting, SherWeb, Mail2Web, and so many more. With so many providers, it’s hard to get a good idea of which one has the best offering and the best service. Does anyone have any recommendations on which provider to go with, or which one to avoid?