Implementing an email service in-house requires capital hardware expenditures including:

• Hardware and software licenses for redundant email, anti-spam and anti-virus servers
• Additional web and application servers for web-based email
• Redundant (mirrored or RAID) storage for mailboxes, with sufficient capacity to meet near-term storage requirements
In addition, you will need the necessary data center infrastructure, including network bandwidth, power supply and rack space as well as monitoring/management software.

Outsourcing email eliminates up-front capital expenditures; you pay a fixed service fee based on the number of mailboxes and features you need.

Subscribers expect email with bundled service packages. However, email may not be one of your core competencies. Running a highly available email service requires a good deal of dedicated staff time, including:

• Experienced email administrator(s) to set up and maintain the system
• Technical support staff to handle customer questions about email service
• Storage and system administrators to handle the infrastructure

The fully-loaded costs of these personnel can be significant. Even if you are using existing staff to perform these functions, you will be diverting their time from primary business job functions.

If you choose to outsource email, the cost of email services is known, fixed, and predictable. It is also very affordable when compared with the true cost of providing email service in-house.

It can be difficult to determine the actual costs of providing email service in-house. The Total Cost of Ownership includes:

• Up-front capital expenditures on infrastructure, service and storage
• Ongoing server and storage upgrades to support growing usage/volumes of data
• Ongoing staff costs in server, storage and email administration
• Ongoing staff costs in technical support

With outsourced email, your true costs are known and fixed.

WebSoft Development^® services scale as you grow. We can handle your growth without costly upgrades or new equipment.