Zimbra hosting really is the new generation of email that was first introduced over 10 years ago with Hotmail and then later perfected by Yahoo mail and then Gmail. However, Zimbra goes a lot further to integrate your entire small business into one collaboration platform. Follow along to find out why YOU should be using Zimbra Hosting!

1. Web Based – Access from Anywhere!

This in my opinion is the best reason to use Zimbra Hosting. Zimbra is a web based platform that helps you break the tethers of your desktop computer. It doesn’t matter if you are in your office or in Bangladesh – you can access your mail anywhere.

If you use Zimbra hosting the way it’s intended, then there is no need for Outlook or Outlook Express. Note though – if you just can’t break the Outlook chains, Zimbra acts just like any other email server and allows for Outlook integration natively.

2. No More SMTP Issues!

If you use Zimbra hosting with the web-based interface, you will have no more SMTP issues. This is a real big one in my opinion because all of the big ISP’s in the past year have started blocking port 25 (the normal SMTP port) which in turn has made it very hard to send mail.

The reason ISPs are blocking port 25? Spam. They estimate that 98% of all spam is now created by spam bots that are installed on your computer when you visit websites and secretly send out spam using your email account information when your computer is idle. Scary huh?

At Web Unlimited, we had to switch all of our mail servers to allow for port 587. But the problem with this is it’s just poking our fingers in a crack in the dam. Eventually, the spammers will get get smart and start sending out on port 587.

So how do you get around that? Start using a web-based client like Zimbra Hosting! Since it works straight off of the server, there aren’t any outgoing mail servers to send to and therefore no sending issues!

3. Share Your Calendar

The next four items are what make Zimbra hosting really shine. Zimbra was created as an open source Exchange alternative and is excellent at helping you organize your team to get on the same page.

This first item is the ability to share your calendar in Zimbra hosting. You can share Zimbra calendars externally with whomever you send the link to or you can share it internally with one or more employees.

We use shared Zimbra calendars at Web Unlimited to schedule our training room or add important items to the employees calendar like holidays or upcoming training for them.

4. Share Files

I don’t care who you are, sharing files with your team is just cool. We use Zimbra hosting file sharing – called your briefcase – here at Web Unlimited to share important files such as marketing materials and project lists. Plus as an added bonus, you can use Zimbra file sharing for storing files you need to access from anywhere.

Our sales director has his sales queue in an Excel worksheet in his Zimbra briefcase so he can update it from anywhere. If he makes it home and forgot to update something, he just pulls it up from his Zimbra hosting account and edits it right then and there. The possibilities are only limited by the amount of storage you are allowed on the Zimbra hosting server!

5. Share Task Lists

The second collaboration feature within Zimbra hosting are shared task lists. If you have a team, you’ll understand how important this is. You can create a task list for your team members and let them update the progress on those items including percentage completed.

The Zimbra hosting shared task list feature won’t replace a full blown project management tool like Basecamp or Microsoft Project, but it’s helps you and your team get on the same page for what you expect them to be working on.

6. Shared Address Lists

Zimbra shared address lists in my opinion is one of the coolest features of the Zimbra hosting platform. It allows you to define a Global address list and share that list with your team.

Gone are the days of having to ask your team members to send you the contact information for each client. If they add the client to your global address list, then you just have to start typing that client’s name and it will pop up!

7. Zimbra is extensible through Zimlets

The Zimbra hosting platform is very extendable and allows for plug-ins of all types. One of the best ones that we’ve found is the Salesforce Zimlet that plugs right into your Salesforce account. There’s even a Social media Zimlet that allows you to plug into your Facebook and Twitter accounts!

As Zimbra hosting gets more and more popular, you’ll start seeing more and more integration with tools because Zimbra is SO extensible.

8. No more viruses!

With Zimbra hosting, gone are the days of email attachment viruses! Since Zimbra is web-based, you can check your email without the fear of opening an email with a virus attached to it. That of course is only if you don’t download the attachment! 🙂

9. Anti-spam built in!

Along the same note as the item above, Zimbra hosting does just an excellent job of filtering out any spam. Of course Web Unlimited has a very powerful anti-spam solution in place, but every once in a while an email will sneak through and Zimbra figures out that it’s spam and adds it to the spam folder. We’ve been using Zimbra hosting for over a year and I personally have had zero spam in my in-box. Zimbra does THAT good of a job!

10. All of your Email in ONE Place!

Drum roll please…. and the last reason why you should be using Zimbra Hosting? All of your email will be in one place! Gone will be the days of downloading an email to your work computer, needing access to that email at home and not being able to get to it because it actually downloaded from the server to your work desktop. Since Zimbra hosting is web-based, it serves as a centralized placeholder for all of your emails. If you need access to an email you got last week, there it is!

Summary

Well that’s all of the reasons I could come up with right now for why you should be using Zimbra hosting. I fell in love with Zimbra the first time I used it and have been trying to get all of our clients to use it ever since. If you can take a chance and try to break the chains of Outlook you will see just how liberating and fun Zimbra hosting can be!

Web Unlimited Plug

Ok, I haven’t gone through this entire blog entry to not plug Web Unlimited! We of course have Zimbra hosting packages that start at $25 per month for 50 users. That’s an unbelievable $.50 per month per user! MSRP for Zimbra hosting is upwards of $5.00 per month per user.

Why are Web Unlimited’s Zimbra Hosting Packages so low? Because I’ve turned into a Zimbra evangelist and I want EVERYBODY to have the ability to experience Zimbra!

So go to our Zimbra Hosting Packages page or call us toll-free at 888-516-0172 to get started using Zimbra hosting today!