Zimbra Hosting
More and more business owners and IT managers are searching for a way to delegate the responsibility of hosting their own mail and calendar programs on-site.
Zimbra hosting has emerged as a popular option. Zimbra has proven to hold a number of advantages over some of the more “traditional” business email solutions such as Microsoft Outlook.
Zimbra can be hosted on-site or off-site with unique advantages to both choices. Once a business owner has decided to use Zimbra, the only question left is where to host it.
A Comparison of Hosting Zimbra On-Site vs. Off-Site
Here are a few factors that may help you decide whether you want to host Zimbra on-site or off-site.
1. Features
When hosted on-site, every Zimbra feature is available to both users and administrators.
However, when hosting is moved off-site, there is a real possibility that the administration features can become limited. Fortunately, the features that are limited are primarily limited to the actual domain configuration.
Additionally, many Zimbra hosting companies have a variety of additional features that are made available, which can easily make up the difference.
2. Support
While Zimbra offers support all day and every day, it is up to the business’ own IT team to take care of the server and hardware themselves when it is hosted on-site.
When it is hosted off-site, the support is completely reliant on which hosting provider a business chooses. As long as a good hosting service provider is chosen, support is not needed as often and can result in long term savings.
3. Customization
Obviously, if Zimbra is hosted on-site, the business will have maximum flexibility. The IT team can fine tune the configuration, customize branding and skins, manage policies, and deploy any Zimlet or custom web service.
When trying to customize Zimbra when it is hosted off-site, the customization allowed is completely reliant on the hosting service provider. With that said, they will often allow a high level of customization too.
4. Overall Deployment and Pricing
When hosting Zimbra on-site, you get the maximum level of deployment flexibility. However, this also means that you are responsible for all of the hardware and configuration for the server, as well as integrating Zimbra with other internal systems.
On-site Zimbra hosting costs include all of the server costs, related IT team costs, as well as the cost of Zimbra. The cost of Zimbra is on a per user, per year basis.
Off-site Zimbra hosting still allows for a high level of deployment flexibility. Unfortunately, your involvement with hardware and software maintenance is limited, as well as with feature configuration and other customizations. With off-site Zimbra hosting, the price is reliant on the monthly or annual price that you choose.
I’m happy someone decided to finally clear things up on this.