Note: Mistral is now known as Kingston Communications.
Established in 1994, Mistral assures its customers that it is the number one ISP in the UK. It offers its customers high-quality, high-speed resilient network performance. As well, Mistral is a Microsoft Gold partner.
Pros: Kingston Communications offers a 30-day business email trial so that users can try out the service before they commit. They offer pricing by the amount of users on the service. Mistral gives users individual and shared calendars, group scheduling, Web access, content searching and index, task management and assignments, and regular backups. As well, anti-virus and anti-spam protection is included. Because they cater to UK users primarily, all prices are in pounds, so there’s no figuring out to do.
Cons: Extra storage costs are per month - £15.00 per 500 MB, and £5.00 per 100 MB.
Version of BES: Kingstonl uses Microsoft Exchange 2003.
Plans and Pricing: Kingston Communications offers two tiers of hosted exchange services, Standard and Premium. Each carries five different mailbox sizes: 100MB, 250MB, 500MB, 1GB, and 2GB.
The 1 to 4 Standard plan starts at £5.49 for 100MB and goes up to £9.26 for 2GB. The 5 to 10 plan runs from £4.51 to £8.28, the 11 to 25 plan runs from £3.85 to 7.63, the 26 to 50 plan runs from £3.49 to £7.26, the 51 to 100 plan runs from £3.21 to £6.99, and the 101+ plan runs from £2.99 to £6.76.
On the Premium end, the 1 to 4 plan runs £9.39 to £11.37, the 5 to 10 plan runs £7.88 to £9.87, the 11 to 25 plan runs £6.88 to 8.87, the 26 to 50 plan runs £6.51 to £8.49, the 51 to 100 plan runs £6.32 to £8.21, and the 101+ plan runs £5.89 to £7.87. The Premium plan includes shared features like address book, folders, and calendars, along with a 500MB public folder. It also includes the ability to upgrade capacity and a free license for Outlook 2007.
Kingston offers BlackBerry Enterprise service at £10.00 a month, per user.
Firewall Protection: Kingston offers mail encryption in the form of a 128-bit SSL certificate for £200 a year, including set-up.
Anti-Spam and Virus Protection: Virus and anti-spam protection is included with all plans.
Set-up Fee: Set-up fees are charged with every plan, for every mailbox. However, they are one-time fees.
Other Devices Supported: Kingstgon supports BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 5 devices.
Customer Service: Kingston provides 24/7 service for their customers through telephone and email. They also monitor your connection closely so that they fix problems as they come up.
Backup History Storage: Nightly backups are performed to make sure that your data is safe and can be recovered if there is an emergency.
Uptime Guarantee: Kingston offers a 100% uptime guarantee.
Additional Services: You can get security services, connectivity services, voice, storage and backup, and applications, as well as full hosting services from Kingston.
Fee to Change BlackBerry for Current Customers: There is no charge for this service.
