Overview:
Mi8 Hosted Exchange (Mi8) is, like its sister company MailStreet, a division of Apptix Inc. The company assures customers that they are different from the average hosting company – they operate as an extension of your IT team so that you don’t have to maintain your services yourself.
Pros: Mi8 offers both Exchange services and wireless for their customers. They include a copy of Outlook 2000, 2002 or 2003 for each mailbox, public folders, contact management, task tracking, calendars, notes, advanced protection (including anti-virus, anti-spam, content scanning and anti-intrusion systems; optional VPN), and more. As well, they offer an account management and administration system called Q2 for its users. The company also supports BlackBerry Enterprise Servers, Exchange ActiveSync and Goodlink Services. Pricing is also pretty good – mailboxes start at $6.00 and go up from there.
Cons: The company seems to be a bit behind compared to others, who are already using the 2007 version of Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. However, if your company uses earlier versions of the software, this could work for you. Also, although Mi8 supports Mac, they do not support the iPhone or the full complement of communication protocols. They also don’t list prices on the site – if you’re just looking, you still have to contact their sales team.
Detailed Provider Information:
Version of BES: Mi8 uses Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007.
Plans and Pricing: Mi8 provides plans for Microsoft Exchange 2003 at this time. Users can get a 500 MB mailbox at $9.95 a user per month, with no set-up fee. They can also get a 1 GB mailbox at $14.95 a month per user, also with no set-up fee. If you have a bigger business, Mi8 provides plans based on how many users you have. Their 10-pack plan provides 10 1 GB mailboxes at $125 a month. There is a $49.95 set-up fee. The 20-pack plan provides 20 1 GB mailboxes at $250 a month with a $99.95 set-up fee. Lastly, their 50-pack plan provides 50 1 GB mailboxes at $652 a month with a $199.95 set-up fee.
They also provide BlackBerry Exchange Service for $10 a user, per month, but you must have a hosted Exchange mailbox with the company to benefit from this. Although all accounts provide basic anti-virus and anti-spam protection, you can buy an advanced security package for $1.50 per user, per month. As well, extra mailboxes are 300 MB at $12.50 a user, per month.
Firewall Protection: Mi8 does offer a secure connection through 128 bit encryption to their users, and they can optionally connect through a VPN for ultimate security. If you use their OnSight Exchange System, you can connect behind their corporate firewall.
Anti-Spam and Virus Protection: According to the Website, Mi8 updates their anti-virus protection every hour to ensure that no viruses get into your system and then get passed to your clients.
Set-up Fee: There are set-up fees for mailbox plans over 10 mailboxes of $49.95 to $199.95.
Other Devices Supported: Mi8 supports BlackBerry, Treo, Windows Pocket PCs and SmartPhones.
Customer Service: A 24/7 customer care team has been set-up to help users with any questions or problems they may have. As well, Mi8 provides documentation in a public folder on the best practices for Outlook Exchange to head off any problems. Their parent company, Apptix, is a Microsoft Gold member.
Backup History Storage: Mi8 backs up their system and data nightly to tapes. As well, you can also get optional email archiving for a fee.
Uptime Guarantee: The company provides 99.9% uptime guarantee with contractual financial penalties for non-compliance.
Additional Services: Mi8 offers fax and storage services, as well as email archiving for their users. They offer domain registration and DNS hosting, data migration, and email policy enforcement.
Fee to Change BlackBerry for Current Customers: $45.00 for Exchange 2003, $39.95 for Exchange 2007. This applies to all BlackBerries.
The worst exchange provider ever. We had in the last 6 months 1 day of full email loss, since then we still experience about 5% of emails never arriving on our end or to our customers. Customer support is non existent. Out of the 20 cases logged last month, we got exactly 1 resolved, and have emailed about 200 times. Stay away from them
After being a customer for under a year I have had nothing but issues with Mi8. The support was helpful but after moving my mailbox to several different servers my issue was not resolved. My ticket sat with their Engineering team for over a month. When I finally reached their Engineering manager (Mr Burkenholder) I was told to migrate to their new Exchange 2007 platform which would resolve my issue. He was rude and basically did not want to hear or attempt to resolve my issue. Since it appeared that even Mi8's Engineerng team could not or would not resolve my issue I've migrated to an inhouse Exchange server. I agreee with Hans STAY AWAY from Mi8.
We've had alot of problems with Mi8 over the past several months. Wait times of very lengthy when we need to call Mi8 fo assistance. E-mail connection goes down alot. Best of all, as of today, April 24th, 2008, MI8's website is completely offline. I am wondering if they've gone out of business.