Average: 4.5 (2 votes)

Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) is far and away the best solution for small business email.  It is hard to argue with the pricing, features, support, and simplicity of implementation.  There are a few limitations of SBS to consider and some costs to doing internal email that are often overlooked.  The question that you should ask as a small business owner is "Should I host my own email".  Consider some of the costs associated with internal email.

SBS offers the email you need, but what about virus protection, spam filtering, technical support and backups.  These are some of the often overlooked costs of having internal email.  Virus protection and SPAM filtering will cost about $10/user/app on an annual basis after an intial investment of between $1,500 and $2,500 depending on the number of users.  Microsoft has a free SPAM filter, however it will only catch about 60% of the SPAM, 10% more may be caught by your Outlook SPAM filter and that will let 30% of the SPAM into your inbox.  Wow, that doesn't sound so bad until you consider that as much as 90% of the email on the Internet on any one given day is SPAM.  You will also need some sort of backup solution and software.  The cost of which isn't specific to an email implementation.  The only cost that is  email specific would be a backup agent for Exchange to give you much needed backup/restore options with Exchange.  Such as individual mailbox backup and restore versus the entire message store backup.  If one persons inbox has a problem you don't want to have to restore everyones inbox, you just want to restore that one persons inbox, that is what the Exchange backup agent does.  Cost is roughly $1,000 depending on your backup solution.

All that pales in comparison to the cost of supporting Exchange.  I estimate conservatively that a small business requires at least forty hours of support annually for in-house email.  Most small business contract for this support at around $100 per hour (conservatively).  So your annual cost of support is $4,000.  This is conservative, as one significant problem can easily take a vendor forty hours to troubleshoot, restore, and fix an email issue.

There is one more hidden cost, the cost of upgrading.  The most significant limitations of SBS are the user/device limit of 75, no support for remote offices, and the SBS has to be the primary domain server.  Once you reach the limits imposed by SBS it's time to upgrade to the full blown versions of all the software that are included as part of SBS.  In Microsoft's own words "Pricing has been designed so that you won't pay any more than if you had bought the individual product components initially."  The cost to transition could be significant but it will be no more than if you bought all the components up front.  Microsoft gives the small business access to many of the features of their enterprise class software for a great price, and when your business grows with the help of this software Microsoft would like their investment in your company recognized with a return in the form of upgrade costs.  To help in the transition Microsoft has the  Windows Small Business Server 2003 Transition Pack.  I have seen many creative ways of prolonging the inevitable cost of upgrading from SBS to the full blown Microsoft products.  However, it is inevitable.

If you aren't going to use many of the features of Exchange such as shared calendars and public folders you may want to consider a hosted Google Gmail account.  You can use your own domain name and you get a fantastic email server and calendar.  SPAM filtering, Virus protection, and a 7x24 tech support team with far more email experience than your local vendor in working to maintain an email system.  The cost $50 per account per year.  You might say you want Exchange, but you didn't realize all the extra costs associated with having your own email server.  For $125 setup fee and $125 per month you can have 10 hosted Exchange accounts.  This plan includes spam, antivirus, tech support and a free copy of Outlook and/or Entourage for those MAC users.  You can add mobile messaging support for $5 per month per device.  There are several of these vendors on the web.

SBS server has Exchange built into the cost, but that doesn't mean that hosting your own email is free.  Consider the costs and ask the right question, "Should I host my own email, or should I get a hosted service".