Overview
Intermedia has been around since 1995 and promises that they are the number one U.S. provider of hosted Exchange and Web hosting for businesses, small or mid-sized. They are based out of New York City with offices in California.
Pros: The company offers plans for small, medium and large businesses with differently-sized and priced mailboxes for each. Depending on what kind of Exchange server you’re looking for and how many people you need mailboxes for, Intermedia offers low monthly plans with no cancelation fees. You also get immediate signup and activation, and the set-up fee is waived for small businesses of less than 10 people. The plans also include nice features like free Outlook 2007 and 24/7 tech support and uptime guarantee.
Cons: As the number of people on the plan goes up, you will have to pay elevated plan fees and set-up fees of between $125 and $575. As well, if you want to add extra mailboxes to the plan, it will cost you extra, although the fee is low. Intermedia does offer optional features for each plan, but you might change your mind when you see the fees per mailbox. Although Intermedia does give a maximum attachment size of 50 MB for their emails, other companies will have a cap, so attachments that big may never reach people you are trying to email.
Detailed Provider Information:
Version of BES: (Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, Novell Group Wise) Intermedia uses Microsoft Exchange 2007.
Plans and Pricing: Depending on your needs, Intermedia offers four different plans. The first plan is for 3 users and up and is $11.95 a month for the first 3 mailboxes. You get 500 MB disk space and immediate signup and activation. As well, there isn’t a monthly contract and you won’t be charged cancellation fees. You are offered free antivirus and anti-span as well as free Outlook 2007 (or Entourage for Mac). There is additional storage available, but if you want to buy more space, you will be charged $8.95 per 500 MB.
The second plan is for 10 users and up and is $125 a month for all 10. If you want to add another mailbox, it’s $11.95 on top of that. You get 2 GB of disk space, per Microsoft guidelines, and all the features of a small business account. However, there is a set-up fee of $125 for this plan. As well, for each additional mailbox, you only get 1GB of storage. If you want to buy more, you will have to pay $10.95 per 2 GB.
The third plan is for 25 users and up. It’s $295 per month for 25 mailboxes at 2 GB each. You will have to pay a set-up fee of $295. You can add extra mailboxes without limit, at $11.95 per mailbox. As with the 10+ user plan, mailboxes are 1GB each. If you want to add extra storage, you’ll have to pay $10.95 per 2 GB.
The last plan available is the 50+ user plan for medium-sized businesses. For 50 mailboxes, you pay $575 a month and you will be charged a set-up fee of $575. You can add mailboxes without limit; however, like all of the other plans, you will be charged $11.95 per mailbox and the mailboxes only have 1 GB of space. Extra storage costs $10.95 per 2 GB.
If your business is bigger than 50 users, you can try one of Intermedia’s Enterprise Plans. Each user is given a 2 GB mailbox and the cost for each additional mailbox is $12.50. There are four enterprise plans. The 100+ plan costs $1295 a month and has a $1295 set-up fee. The 200+ plan is $2495 and has a $2495 set-up fee. The 500+ plan is $5995 and has a $5995 set-up fee. Lastly, the 1,000+ plan is $11,995 and has the same price set-up fee.
For all plans, users are offered a Tier 4 datacenter and EMC SAN for storage. As well, your plan has daily backups, so you won’t lose anything. Backup retention lasts for 7 days. If Service Level Agreements (which you are given a copy of when you sign up) aren’t met, Intermedia will give refunds.
Intermedia does offer BlackBerry Exchange Server service as well as optional add-ons for your mobile device. The BlackBerry service is $9.95 a month, Good Mobile Messaging is $19.95 a month, and ActiveSync is $4.95 a month.
Firewall Protection: Intermedia provides great anti-virus and anti-spam protection that comes free with every plan.
Anti-Spam and Virus Protection: Intermedia includes free anti-virus and anti-spam protection with each of its plans. These are continuously maintained and updated by Intermedia itself. As well, Intermedia promises that you won’t experience a slowdown in email service because the anti-virus clustered servers are separate from the email server. The anti-spam protection works with Outlook or Entourage 2007 and implements a two-tier quarantine system, where spam email is either deleted or put in the Junk folder.
Set-up Fee: There is a set-up fee for any plan over 3+. These fees range from $125-$575, depending on the number of people.
Other Devices Supported: Besides BlackBerry, Intermedia supports Treo, Motorola Q, Nokia E61 and HTC smartphones. As well, it also supports Apple’s iPhone. On their Website, they have a full list of supported devices.
Customer Service: Businesses with plans are given 24/7 tech service and support by Intermedia’s MS-Gold certified expert staff. Your Exchange server is constantly maintained and updated.
Backup History Storage: For a fee, the Intermedia engineers will back up your email and data nightly. They make sure that you will never lose any data permanently and will ship hard copies of your data on removable media on request. For a mailbox with 1.7 GB of data, the price is $9.95. It’s $34.95 for mailboxes with more than 1.7 GB of data. There is also a $25 shipping and handling fee. For plans without this extra feature, Intermedia stores 7 days of backup history.
Uptime Guarantee: For all plans, Intermedia offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is listed in the Service Level Agreement.
Additional Services: Users can add services to their plans like Good Mobile Messaging, ActiveSync, Spam Stopper, SharePoint Services, Email Compliance and Migration.
For Good Mobile Messaging, you will have to pay $19.95 a month, with a $29.95 set-up fee. However, you are offered quite a few features, such as easy set-up, full integration and a fully-managed service. ActiveSync is $4.95 a month and has no set-up fee. With this service, you can manage your devices from inside your Web mail or Intermedia’s control panel. Email Compliance, with three different features at different prices per month, allows you to monitor your employees’ email and keep them productive. Spam Stopper is a comprehensive program that protects your system and email from spam and harmful spyware. It costs $1 a month. You can also choose to move your email to your Intermedia Exchange server to keep everything in order.
Fee to Change BlackBerry for Current Customers: There is no charge for this service.
We recently switched over to www.Intermedia.net from another provider and so far we're very happy with our decision. With the help of their support staff the migration was painless.
I've been with Intermedia for almost a year and their service has been awesome. they host our email in the office and on my phone and it works like a dream.
Absolutly Hosrrible.. Down again.. so far 6 hours!
This is from their status page:
Currently some customers hosted on server EXVMBX016-5 may experience issues when accessing e-mail. Some of the mailbox databases were corrupted. Our System Administrators are restoring data at the moment, so your mailbox might be unavailable for a while. The whole restoration process should be completed within the next 3-4 hours. No data will be lost during the restoration. All incoming messages are queued on the mail filter servers and will be delivered to the mailboxes once the mailboxes are restored.
I've been with them for over a year. I have no issues with them. The service is excellent and you can easily get someone on the phone if you need help. They lost 1 star because they are expensive and there are many hidden costs such as the service comes with anti-SPAM, but it is worthless. If you want their premium anti-SPAM (the one that works) you have to pay extra.