MS Exchange Account Required? Cheapest hosting option that includes it?

icebergx

Hi all,
I currently have my domain name, website and email hosted at TSO host (tsohost.com,) for my (soon to be launched) property maintenance business.

As part of our internal organisation, three Account Managers (AMs) need to book jobs/appointments for five Tradesman (TMs,) and enter them into their resprective calendars. TMs will then visit each job, undertake works, then send a report back to AMs.

Apparently I need a Microsoft Exchange account for each AM and TM to do this. Is that correct? TSO are saying I need to pay £10 per month for each Exchange account (3AMs, 5 TMs + myself 9 accounts) which seems very high to me.

Are there and more economic ways to do this? I'd be prepared to move my website/domain hosting if I could bend a better alternative. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks.

AndyPix

If you want they to have their own calendars then you will have to pay for the accounts - but it does seem dear . Why did you use them for hosting ???


Me personally id knock up a little webportal with an sql backend that would do that stuff , to live on your hosting ..
Maybe you can get someone freelance ??


Im sure others will have other ideas

dan958

See how much it would cost to get this directly from Microsoft (office 365 exchange). Then point your MX records to Office 365 (and the other DNS records).
You can still keep your website hosting and domain with your current provider.

icebergx

AndyPix wrote: »

If you want they to have their own calendars then you will have to pay for the accounts - but it does seem dear . Why did you use them for hosting ???


Me personally id knock up a little webportal with an sql backend that would do that stuff , to live on your hosting ..
Maybe you can get someone freelance ??


Im sure others will have other ideas

I think the original deal I had with them, was predominantly for basic email hosting from a few years ago, and they were quite reasonable for the "whole shabang..." I think I paid £17 per year, including two domain names, basic email and web hosting...

To be honest, the web hosting we have at the moment is a bit slow, the website its snappy to load, so I'd consider moving everything over if I can get it for a reasonable price.
I'm quite tech-savvy but don't really know my about the "SQL" and "Web Portal" stuff you mentioned. Is that something easy to do/learn?

Thanks AndyPix

dan958

icebergx wrote: »

I think the original deal I had with them, was predominantly for basic email hosting from a few years ago, and they were quite reasonable for the "whole shabang..." I think I paid £17 per year, including two domain names, basic email and web hosting...

To be honest, the web hosting we have at the moment is a bit slow, the website its snappy to load, so I'd consider moving everything over if I can get it for a reasonable price.
I'm quite tech-savvy but don't really know my about the "SQL" and "Web Portal" stuff you mentioned. Is that something easy to do/learn?

Thanks AndyPix

SQL can be difficult to learn depending on your technical knowledge. You might want to see if there are any self-hosted calendar/appointment solutions that would work for you. Not much point paying a freelancer if the software aleady exsts (although may be required if you need bespoke features)

icebergx

dan958 wrote: »

See how much it would cost to get this directly from Microsoft. Then point your MX records to Office 365 (and the other DNS records).
You can still keep your website hosting and domain with your current provider.

Thanks Dan. I think Office Exchange charge £3 per user per month... This could be a solution, but ideally I'd like an "all-in" service/price where I could add as many users (up to 10-15) as I want... Not sure if that exists ��!♂️

Are there any potential solutions to this via Google/G-Suite? I already have Office 365 for all our devices, so i won't need any of their google app features, just the ability to share calendars.

Thanks for all the advice so far.

Edit: I just found a G-Suite Reseller offering accounts for £13.10 per year, so that might be a good solution. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Edit 2: Another Reseller is selling Office Business Essentials for £16.38per user, per year... Is this likely to 'play' better with Outlook (desktop) than G-Suite?'

icebergx

dan958 wrote: »

You might want to see if there are any self-hosted calendar/appointment solutions that would work for you.

Not sure where to start looking for something like this, but I'll have a look. Does anything spring to mind? As long as the guys can connect to the service via their desktop versions of outlook, I'd be happy.