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4iPhone hosted Exchange for iPhone

by Mat Lu Jun 28th 2008 at 2:00PM

4SmartPhone is getting ready to launch 4iPhone, a hosted Microsoft Exchange server for small businesses and individuals. It basically offers access to the Exchange based Enterprise features of the 3G iPhone including ActiveSync and DirectPush of email, contacts, etc. to users who don't have an Exchange server. 4SmartPhone already offers this for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices for $11-$16 a month and pre-registration for 4iPhone is available now, though prices have not been announced.

Frankly, I suspect most individuals would be better off just using Apple's forthcoming MobileMe service. But for small businesses who want to equip their employees with iPhones, but don't want to incur the upfront expense of running an Exchange Server themselves, something like 4iPhone is probably worth a look.

[via jkOnTheRun]

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4SmartPhone is getting ready to launch 4iPhone, a hosted Microsoft Exchange server for small businesses and individuals. It basically...
 

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Douglass S

I agree that products maybe the same, yet the service may be very different. This includes reliability, uptime and support staff. Some providers operate from home apartments... or lease premises from other bigger ones.

I therefore don't quite agree that price is the most important factor. When I was using smaller guys or some bigger who had support in Russia or India - my email was constantly going down, Blackberry activesync failed and had all kinds of issues.

Finally I found Hosted Exchange provider 123Together.com and had no issues since. The only scheduled downtime they had i was promptly notified about in advance.
Their prices are from $9.99, yet I don't mind paying $3 per month extra for piece of mind.

Javier

September 22 2008 at 2:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Cohen

I have iPhone and I also do it with www.apps4rent.com - They provide 1GB hosted Exchange 2007 for $6.95. I have been with them for 6 months. Not bad so for. I think all providers have the same hosted Exchange product. It is best to go with good price.

September 17 2008 at 9:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Douglass S

Been there,, done that: googled Hosted Exchange
Support for many other mobile devices is offered with 123together.com email hosting offers: http://www.123together.com/mobility.xhtml

August 18 2008 at 12:12 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Damien

I think Apple finally got this right: I've been waiting to hook up my hosted exchange account from http://www.123together.com to Apple iPhone.
So hosting support there have been promising it for a while, so it's now finally working!
While i liked to use Blackberry Mobility - it was at the high price...

I am thankful that Apple finally thinking beyond staying MAC-exclusive and looking at Windows tools.
Goodbye my expensive BlackBerry, hello iPhone.

August 07 2008 at 5:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
StevenBallmer

Buggy like all Mac programs!


http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

June 29 2008 at 2:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
skibo

@me.com works for me.
I just sent myself a test email and it worked. Now lets get it on the iPhone ASAP.

June 28 2008 at 10:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daniel D

I own my own domain and I can forward mail sent to me@MYDOMAIN.com to any email address I want, including my .mac one. I am surprised you can't do the same?

June 28 2008 at 8:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Daniel D's comment
donnacha

No, forwarding mail is not the same as actually using your domain for your mail and being recognized, for spam purposes, as the primary sender. Huge difference.

June 28 2008 at 10:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Abid

I've actually been in touch with Apple.com support, phone support and even in-store employees about the issue of custom domains. The problem with our company is that we use Google Apps for Domains for our email - - and if I was going to use Mobile Me, I'd want my emails to retain the domain name, rather than the me.com domain. No one was able to answer one way or the other. The only thing they could confirm was email forwarding for incoming messages...but no one could confirm email aliasing for outgoing emails. If the new service supports this feature, then it would be an effective blackberry or Windows Mobile Push competitor. Otherwise, it will be a niche service for users who would like push email to a new me.com account.

June 28 2008 at 10:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
donnacha

MobileMe will be useless to anyone who uses their own domain i.e. small businesses, freelancers and the technically-literate, so, there will actually be a huge market for hosted exchange services once the iPhone firmware is updated.

June 28 2008 at 4:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to donnacha's comment
deep

Wrong!!! You have been able to use your own domain on .Mac for sometime now...

From the ".Mac to MobileMe transition FAQ" located at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1932

"If you have a personal domain setup for your iWeb site, it will continue to work without changing any settings at your registrar."

This implies the use of private domains. And as most hosting companies have free redirects for mail, you can forward your mail to your MobileMe account and just have the return (or respond to) address in preferences state your original email address. No one will know that mail is being pushed to your iPhone and that you are responding from it.

June 28 2008 at 10:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Felix

I feel that the huge benefit going with 4Smartphone is the ability to use your own domain name. Unless MobileMe offers such service, this is a big deal for me and most corporate and business customers.

June 28 2008 at 4:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jash Sayani

$ 11 - 16 a month !!!
MobileMe would be way cheaper ! With for Push features, Gallery support, access to the web 2.0 apps, native apps support, etc, etc....

June 28 2008 at 4:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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