Don't Back Down

Due to developments, I'm looking for some Exchange hosting providers. I tried 123together.com. Bad choice. Really, really bad choice. Not only is their service sub-par, the support absolutely stinks. The chat sessions go something like a conversation between dementia patients in a nursing home:

      Hi - I'd like to close my account.
      Uh, you're happy with your service?
      No, I want to get rid of it.
      Hold on a moment please.

Some time later, we start again. On three separate occasions, I was told to contact their support department via email. To this point, I have not received a single response. Nice. Luckily, their competence extends to their billing system, where I entered an American Express card number that I was sent in the mail the other day. Frankly, I was surprised that the Your Business Name Here account worked. But I won't complain.

So meanwhile, I'm still looking. At the moment, 1and1 and Mailstreet seem to be the best options. Mailstreet, however, is already exhibiting a bit of the nursing home syndrome - luckily we're still in the pricing stage there. 1and1 seems to be progressing, though I had to sign up for an account to get any useful information. I'll keep you posted.

Update: The 1and1 solution seems decent, but it's not going to work here. Shame, too, as they have a large offering (1GB) for less money ($6.99). But it's not really friendly for a domain not hosted at 1and1. It may or may not be friendly for a domain hosted at 1and1, but since ours isn't, it's not really that important, now is it? Guess it's up to Mailstreet. Will they deliver?

Update: With the first user at Mailstreet, I can say that I am suitably impressed. Though they have their moments, they are few and far between. The people in sales that I have talked to are quite competent, even technically, and the support staff has been right on the money in each case. At the moment, I'm only using two forwarded accounts, but they are working wonderfully. One with RPC over HTTP and the other via IMAP (incidentally, they are connected via the same instance of Outlook). Very impressive. I'm glad we took this route.