Introduction To Exchange Online – Why Use Exchange Online?

In the following section, we will discuss what is Exchange Online, the key features, benefits & its subscription plans. Microsoft Exchange Online is developed for companies, which wants to gain profit of cloud-based email without dealing with capabilities of business class (provided by Exchange Server). Making use of Exchange Server could be time-consuming, challenging, and costly for growing organizations. Therefore, they uses Exchange Online service, a hosted messaging application that enable users to access complete feature of Exchange Server. It allows access to emails, contacts, calendars, etc.

After a brief introduction to Exchange Online, let’s discover the key features of Exchange Online in detail.

NOTE: The Exchange Server and Exchange Online are two different services or applications. Exchange Server is on-premise whereas the other is cloud-based. Both have their advantages.

Key Features of Exchange Online

1. Hosted By Nature: The ultimate feature of this service is that it has a hosted nature i.e., the service can be accessed in a wide area of network.
2. Connect With Outlook: This service can thoroughly be accessed or connected with clients of Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007.
3. Connect With OWA: Apart from Windows Outlook applications, the service is also supported by Outlook Web App for emailing, sharing calendar and contacts, etc., with help of any web-connected elements.
4. Enough Storage Space: For each registered user, the service provides 25 GB of storage space that is more than enough for users.
5. Provide Compliance: The another interesting feature of this application is that it supports compliance rules and retention for organizations.
6. Security Aspect: Last feature comes the security aspect of Exchange Online services. For security, an additional tool is to be purchased and installed i.e., Microsoft Forefront Online Protections

Benefits of Using Exchange Online

After taking a brief introduction to Exchange Online & its unique features, let’s explore about the benefits of Microsoft Exchange Online.

• The service provides Outlook users an online connectivity from web browsers.
• Through Exchange ActiveSync, users can access their calendar, emails, and contacts on mobile phone.
• With help of Exchange Online, users can share their calendar data with other entity.
• If user wants to use data 24 * 7, then the best option is to use Exchange Online service.

Exchange Online Subscription Plans

This service is offered to the users in different costs. Depending on the need the can subscribe this service. Let’s see the various Exchange Online subscription plans.

There exist two plans of Exchange Online and both of them are mentioned below with its cost:

1. First plan is for one month with cost of $5 per user
2. Another plan prices $10 per user with advance features

Both the above discussed schema will provide users with all technical features (discussed above), but the second plan i.e. $10, will provide enhanced archiving, some additional legal hold, and more compliance rules.

NOTE: Additional cost is to be added for administrators that want other hosted capabilities related to Office 365, like Lync Online and SharePoint Online.

Observational Verdict

In the above section, we have discussed a brief introduction to Exchange Online, its features, benefits & subscription plans. The Exchange Online services is adopted by end users because its service is reliable, easily available, and cheaper in comparison to other online services. Users are provided with complete email protection with help of hosting data in a shared form and with certain capabilities. Among several feature, one feature named as DAG (Database availability group) is developed to maintain data integrity. Therefore, using Exchange Online services can be used for sharing information from anywhere and at anytime.