Zimbra Vs Exchange - Pricing

[gashok]

I am evaluating Zimbra and MS Exchange solutions for our enterprise. I am pretty much aware of what each has on offer and then i went to the pricing aspects.

Although Zimbra has a seemingly low license cost of 28$/User/Year, due to the recurring license (in contrast to a perpetual licenses in case of Exchange world) it looks like it turns out more expensive in the long run - as also suggested in a review if found on the web.

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tr/down...455_review.pdf

Any inputs on this?

[jholder]

Depends on what you plan to do in the long term.

If it's the year 2000, and you plan on staying on exchange 2000 for the next 10 years, then yes: It makes perfect sense to stay with exchange. If not, then you must calculate hardware/OS/Exchange upgrades.

On the linux side:
Many OS's are free
Linux requires less hardware overhead than Windows-based OS's
You always get the latest version from Zimbra (new features and all)

[uxbod]

Welcome to the forums

And a far better product IMHO ... Feature rich, better web interface ... no looking back

[Dirk]

I'm not an expert in microsoft licenses, but if you buy exchange licenses then you get a perpetual license to use that product, but not the next version. With zimbra you can constantly have the current version.

Also, can you put a price on source code? For my money, having access to the souce is not something I like being without. I may not ever need to look at it, but having the source available is a great safety net.

Finally, just incase you need more persuading, if you buy Zimbra, there's a good chance that will annoy Microsoft, and that make it worthwhile

[gashok]

Originally Posted by jholder

Depends on what you plan to do in the long term.

If it's the year 2000, and you plan on staying on exchange 2000 for the next 10 years, then yes: It makes perfect sense to stay with exchange. If not, then you must calculate hardware/OS/Exchange upgrades.

On the linux side:
Many OS's are free
Linux requires less hardware overhead than Windows-based OS's
You always get the latest version from Zimbra (new features and all)

Agreed there is no OS cost for the server with zimbra since its on linux (which is not the case if you are on RHEL server though!) - but that is just 2 or 3 windows server licenses! And we would any way need some of them for our domain logon/AD stuff.
The costs compared in the review are for Exchange/CAL licenses with upgrade - so you do get their upgrades as well.

[uxbod]

Hope you can live with the constant reboots though End of the day it is personal preference, and companies sometimes believe well if *they* run Exchange it must be better. Best way is to run a side by side comparison with a select user base and see which they perceive to be the better option.

[y@w]

Originally Posted by gashok

Agreed there is no OS cost for the server with zimbra since its on linux (which is not the case if you are on RHEL server though!) - but that is just 2 or 3 windows server licenses! And we would any way need some of them for our domain logon/AD stuff.
The costs compared in the review are for Exchange/CAL licenses with upgrade - so you do get their upgrades as well.

Actually, no it's not including upgrades to Exchange or Windows. To quote from the study:

Zimbra’s license does include free upgrades and patches on a yearly per-users basis, but it is much
more expensive than Exchange unless you buy Exchange and then decide to upgrade it to a newer version soon
after.

The study shows the TCO of Zimbra increasing from 1 year to 3 years to 5 years, but Exchange stays static.

I don't trust anything that comes from TechRepublic, but the only thing that the study knocked Zimbra on was that it was hard to install.. which it's not.

[ewilen]

It also may be worth considering the time value of money. In other words, even if you accept that Exchange will not be upgraded for some time, you still pay all the cost up front. With Zimbra, costs spread over time mean you can either stick the money in the bank until the next bill comes, or carry less debt.

Also, as the article notes, if you are able to leave Outlook behind, the economic factors swing more favorably toward Zimbra. (For that matter, if you leave Outlook behind, you may be able to save not only the cost of supporting it in the server, but the cost of clients as well when you look at the "total groupware solution.")

Finally, the article I believe is in error when it says that the "first block" of 25 users is charged $35/year/user. If you get a 50-seat or larger package, all seats are charged at $28/user/year. So the article is making Zimbra out to be $175/year more expensive than it really is.

[ttown]

We just did a cost evaluation and feature comparison at the end of the year. (doing this from memory)

We looked at the feature set of exchange/zimbra and renewal costs per year including costs for the advanced pack CALs for exchange (or whatever they call it). At any rate, costs rolled out 4-5 years still seemed to benefit zimbra, particularly if you figure that you have a server license + CALS on top of the Exchange License + CALS. Also, to get the same (or similar) feature set from Exchange that you get with Zimbra, you have to evaluate the enterprise version, which really made it cost prohibitive....

We are a relatively small shop with 3 windows boxes and 4 Linux boxes, and the Linux boxes hands down are cheaper to administer IMO. I also liked the integrated spamassassin/clamav, since that was how I had configured the previous sendmail setup.

At any rate, we went Zimbra (obviously), and though I just turned things on live yesterday and am short on sleep, so far, am very glad we went this route + it was fun as heck beating up on the box while users loaded 100 GB of email from all over the US and things kept plugging away as if nothing was happening.

But to each his own. Both are stellar products. Go with what you feel comfortable with.

[Protack]

Originally Posted by gashok

I am evaluating Zimbra and MS Exchange solutions for our enterprise. I am pretty much aware of what each has on offer and then i went to the pricing aspects.

Although Zimbra has a seemingly low license cost of 28$/User/Year, due to the recurring license (in contrast to a perpetual licenses in case of Exchange world) it looks like it turns out more expensive in the long run - as also suggested in a review if found on the web.

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tr/down...455_review.pdf

Any inputs on this?

My only comment on this is that it is 1 1/2 year old review. Zimbra has come ALONG way since then.

God Bless,
Marty