On-Premises Versus Hosted Email

On-premises email and collaboration deployments can be the best choice for highly regulated industries, organizations that want the ultimate control of their data and companies that want to maximize customizations, integrations and configurability of their Zimbra environments.

Choosing a trusted partner to host your email infrastructure and deliver it is a service leaves hardware and most administration tasks to the provider. Zimbra offers complete flexibility and across on-premise, hosted or hybrid models.

Compare Deployment Models: On-Premises vs. Hosted


 Zimbra On-Premises Zimbra Hosted
Overall Deployment Flexibility

Maximum

  • Choose hardware and configuration
  • Set all feature, storage and security policies
  • Integrate other internal systems as needed

Medium to High

  • No hardware maintenance
  • Limited software administration
  • Features or customization can be more limited by provider
Zimbra Feature Availability

Maximum

  • All ZCS features available

High

  • Most to all end-user features
  • Limited administration features for domain administration
Support and SLA Responsibility
  • 24/7 product support available from Zimbra and VMware
  • Your IT team owns hardware SLA
  • 24/7 support and uptime guarantees available through hosting partner
  • Partner manages hardware
Deployment Control

Maximum

  • You manage sizing and hardware configuration

(Zimbra or VAR can assist on sizing and migration for larger deployments)

Medium

  • Zimbra partner manages deployment
  • You manage the users
  • Migration assistance from partner available*
Customization

Maximum

  • Tune configuration, set and manage policies
  • Customize experience with branding and skins
  • Deploy any Zimlet or build custom web services

Medium

  • Choose custom domains, logos and colors*
  • Standard Zimlets plus partner’s customization*
Administration

Maximum

  • Control all aspects of the server, back-up policies, mail queues, user provisioning, user attributes through class of service (COS) and delegated administrators

Medium

  • Server, back-up, storage policy set by partner*
  • Manage user provisioning
Pricing
  • Annual, multi-year and perpetual options with discounts for education, government, non-profits and emerging markets
  • Monthly and annual pricing available*

* Specific features and services available vary depending on the partner. Detailed plan information is available on their websites.