Simply put hosted exchange is Microsoft's email and collaboration server (Microsoft Exchange) which is designed to work with Outlook. The term hosted means that the exchange server is located at a data center and managed by another company for you. In the past microsoft exchange server was cost prohibitive for small to medium sized businesses to use as an email and collaboration tool because of the high cost of hardware, software and technical staff to manage it.

Now Microsoft has partnered with service providers allowing anyone the ability to use microsoft exchange for a low per user per month fee and avoid all the upfront and ongoing maintenance costs of an in-house server which are typically thousands of dollars per year even for a small 5 person company. Hosted Exchange providers typically charge between $9.95 and $24.95 per user per month depending on the number of mailboxes your company commits to and the diskspace you require for each mailbox.

Now your business can have the email and collaboration power of Microsoft Exchange Server with no management and cost of hardware, software, back-ups or even technical support to your users. Hosted Exchange providers give you a far superior solution at a fraction of the cost.