Hi all!

I haven't seen a recent post in here regarding how people feel about their L2E service, and I know this section was the first place I looked at when deciding on a BES/Exchange host. For the sake of anyone looking into it (and especially anyone that happens to be using a Mac), I'll just post my experience with signing up for Hosted Exchange service and Hosted BES through them.

Why I chose L2E:
-30 Day Money Back guarantee
-Considerate Tech support employee's
-Rapid response to pre-signup questions, along with a quote (Jeff B. spoke to me over the phone, and answered all of my questions through email)
-SOME support doc's on Mac user's configuration
-Decent amount of mailbox space for my use
-I read a post raving about L2E (from Seattle18 I believe)

First off, my company is in the slowwww process of considering BES in-house. I decided to be the corporate guinea pig and use a hosted service to exemplify the Pro's & Con's of BES. I couldn't outsource our entire exchange service, so instead I had our IT department forward all my emails (from the Exchange box) to my L2E email address (after signing up). This is not an ideal solution, but my setup is rather odd.

I signed up Tuesday October 31 at around 9am. Within half an hour my account was activated, and more than enough resources were emailed directly to me. Total price for my Personal Hosting w/ BES was $49.90 up front, and 19.90/month thereafter.

After signing up and following the isntructions for intial email configuration (OWA, Control panel, etc.), I gave my L2E email address to my IT department to forward. Tested and all was working. I activated my 8700c via Enterprise Activation (info provided via email right after signing up).

I had a few questions regarding setup, so I contacted Chris at L2E's tech support, and he guided me in right direction and gave me some tips. At this point, everything was working fine, with the exception of my Entourage accessing L2E's server, but I will get into that in a moment. he gave me a little more advice, and I set it aside as something to do the next day.

I called again today (Wed, 11/1) regarding the Entourage setup, and Chris emailed me the updated KB documents regarding Entourage, the VPN client, and the overall functioning of the VPN/Email config. It turns out I can't use the VPN because at work i am connected to our Mac server and the VPN takes over the connection, giving me the inability to access vital files. I had IT go BACK into the Exchange server settings and enable the 'Keep emails on server until user deletes' (or however it is worded). I now use my Entourage (which does not access my L2E account) and am able to reconcile email as normal, but still get it amazingly fast on my BB handheld. Contacts/Calendar,etc I reconcile using the Outlook Web Access (no biggie, better that way anyways so I monitor my mailbox size better ).

So, to help you decide whether or not to choose L2E, here's a quick list of what I liked and what I didn't like about the situation:

Likes:
-(Sales) The Customer Service at L2E is great. Quick response, precise answers to my questions regarding service and features. Jeff answered my emails within an hour of me sending them.

-(Signup) Easy, fast, and pretty self explanatory. I had absolutely no questions or issues while in the signup process (other than those for my own IT department)

-(Tech) If you are looking into BES, you already know it's Advantages. Calendar/Contact/Email syncing OTA is phenominal.
-The fact that there IS a way (though not for me) to be on a Mac AND use the Hosted Services is something that's hard to find at this point.
-L2E's tech support number is listed on most of the email's I receive from them, so it's always there if I need it, and they are available when I need them.
-They supported the ability to integrate my corporate email account when ExchangeMyMail was unable to do that (Sales said they were working on it)

-(Price) My 200MB personal hosting, with BES cost me $49.90 upfront, and only $19.95/mo. NO CONTRACT REQUIRED!!! <--great bonus!

Dislikes/Concerns
-Getting through to tech support took me an average of 5 minutes (on hold).No music playing :( I get bored easily (blame ADD, I'm surprised I'm even this far in writing without finding something else to do).

-Mac support is severely lacking (not just with L2E, though. ExchangeMyMail is the same way apparently). The Entourage article I read at first was slightly different than my version (the Mail tab features listed don't appear in my setup). Tech Support clarified it today by sending me a recent update to that KB article.

-The VPN, I don't like it! :( If not for this, I wouldn't have any issues at all with using my Entourage.

Really, the only setback to everything was the fact that I am on a Mac, and on a unique server setup. The VPN cuts my connection to a server I can't work without, but I haven't tried the setup at home, so I will update this once I have attempted that.

I personally can say it was a relatively painless experience. My difficulties came from the typical end-user problems, to which I can't possibly blame L2E for. The only thing I can strongly reccomend to them is that they consider putting A LOT more into the development of Mac user ability. We all see the Mac vs PC commercials, and though it may be a fruitless effort, Mac seems to be making a break for the corporate atmosphere (arguments regarding this probably shouldn't even begin-we all know the truth anywyas ...Mac's rock!) If they were able to rid the VPN client and make it more Mac compatible, it would break the barrier for me (and maybe others) that is witholding me from recommending my office switch to their services.


Best of luck in choosing a Hosting Company for your Exchange/BES! Please don't be offended if you don't agree with something I said. Feel free to PM me or PIN me and let me know. I will gladly take out anything that is against any rules or offends people.

Regards,
Anthony

Helpful readings:
Link2Exchange - Some Knowledge Base articles to read. (Windows & Mac)

Link2Exchange - Hosted Microsoft® Exchange 2003 – Personal L2E's pricing for personal accounts

Good Luck!!!

As promised, I went home and attempted to use the L2E-provided VPN and Entourage Configuration given to me. And low & behold it works like a dream!!! Entourage Calendar/Contacts/Email sync beautifully!

So, as I stated earlier, if you are using a Mac at your office and connect to your company's Exchange server, or any other internal server, [b]you cannot use the VPN, and therefor cannot connect to your L2E email via Entourage[b]. But, you may want to consider trying it, and if it doesn't work and your mad, L2E offers the 30-Day money back guarantee.

And another update:
I used the new KB article and solved the connection issue at work (on Entourage 2004). Also, I'm writing Cisco to see how I can use the VPN and still connect to my LAN (Mac RAID drives, LAN Printers, etc.). I'll make a FINAL update (lol) once I accomplish this. Maybe I'll even write a little Quick Reference Sheet for future use.

Newest Update:

Jeff just called to see how service is working for me, I expressed the small VPN issue when trying to connect to LAN, and there appears to be a new CISCO version available, but I am unaware of whether or not it fixes my issue, or the Intel-Mac issue (Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Cross-Platform Problems.

I won't make this a diary or anything, but I am definitely available to anyone looking for advice on Hosted BES who's working on a Mac.

Wow, been a while since I updated!

Now, at the 6-Month mark with L2E, I'm still extremely happy with them. Great guys, great support, and great prices.

I've been through multiple handhelds, and a few tough technical issues on the device side. Their support was still able to walk me through it quickly, and get anything they could resolved.