Best company email solution software for 50 emplyees (no deleting emails, etc)

[mkx]

I am looking for a cloud or server based email solution to manage about 50 employees/email accounts. My biggest concern is an employee going rogue and deleting a bunch of emails that are on a shared account. It would also be nice that each employee is designated to the account(s) they need access to and there are logs of their replies so they can be held accountable when they don't put their name on something. It would be nice to disable deleting emails but if this can't be done then at least every email that goes in and out should be logged.

I played around with google apps for business for the last few hours and although complicated it seems to have the log that I need so that all emails are retained. However, it is $10/month per user and $500/mo seems like a lot for something like this. I have my own virtual server and am also open to an affordable cloud based service.

Perhaps there is even something server side that I can modify some files in order to forward a copy of all incoming and outgoing emails to a special log account. I actually set this up in the past but it was not the most efficient even though it was free as if someone did go rogue I would be the only one technically able to access to backups and wouldn't be able to restore them easily.

[RummyBoy]

I have no idea if its totally relevant but I will say that CPANEL email is pretty good. Don't know if you can block deleting though I'm sure there's a way to retrieve email. There is for NSA, GCHQ et al so there will be for you too.

[EddyTheDog]

I was going to say Google Apps - As you say, it is expensive though...

Remember you get a lot of other stuff - Cloud space etc.....

[mkx]

Google apps is decent but $10/user per month is a lot. Cloud space isn't important. Right now each store and store manager has their own gmail account for the business but there is not much monitoring of the emails if someone was to do something suspicious. For under $500 I can have someone program a script that will manually go to each gmail account and create a log of all conversations and alerts for deleted email. It's just a bit messy to have 30+ different gmail accounts (the store staff share the main account) and I feel there must be a more advanced solution that gives every employee their own login and has logs on which emails they respond to, delete, etc.

This is a huge deal for me so any advise is really appreciated.

[Sly]

I would look at a company that specializes in Microsoft Exchange. They are still going to charge you a per box rate, but with 50 employees you should be able to get a decent price. I am paying $5 monthly per user. They deal with businesses all the time that have similar needs. Archiving emails is nothing out of the ordinary, in a lot of circles it is a legal requirement (law, medical, etc.)

[BlackCrayon]

you can check out fastmail. it might work for you

https://www.fastmail.com/signup/business.html

[HugeWood]

Take a look at Amazon Workmail, which costs $4/user/month.

[PR_Phil]

use google it is worth it. The first 4 pinned tabs open in my browser 24/7 are google apps.

[Ferus]

Exchange or Office365 + Comarchive http://www.comarchive.com/
All mails are tracked, and stored in archive.
Only Works with Exchange Office365

The copies are stored on a fileshare+sql data, so it takes up less than 15% of the Space it would on a exchangeserver
This way, when you on/offboard new people, you dont have to worry about making copies or exporting their inbox.

In the EU where I live, Places like government and bankingcompanies are requiered by law to have an setup like this to make sure evidence cant be "misplaced"

The users cant delete from the archive.. only the admin

[chaze]

Any CPanel based server will be fine. They all have webmail and pop3 for each account and a master section to manage them all.

Just make sure it's a good host so your not on a blacklisted IP block.

They also need to have spam assassin added if you want good spam protection.

[Adraco]

Can't you get a discount for paying 1 year upfront on Google? I would, again even thought it was already mentioned, recommend it.

Something that works, more or less out of the box. Not much fiddling required from you and someone to call if shit happens. It is worth a lot in the long run!

[avalanche]

Google apps is the best and only $5/user

[chaze]

Google is o.k. they block a lot of good emails though. Be careful

[mkx]

Thanks everyone. The only thing google apps doesn't have regardless of how expensive it is is logging individual users actions in a shared inbox.

Again, I am using free gmail for each store and manager so paying the extra $500+ per month is hard to justify just as rogue employee insurance. It is a lot more organized though with google apps but hard to justify for that price. I would need the $10 version instead of $5 since the $5 one doesn't have Vault which logs emails

[sandman!]

you could install the free version of https://www.zimbra.com/ on a server and pay someone to configure it like you want.

Originally Posted by mkx

Thanks everyone. The only thing google apps doesn't have regardless of how expensive it is is logging individual users actions in a shared inbox.

Again, I am using free gmail for each store and manager so paying the extra $500+ per month is hard to justify just as rogue employee insurance. It is a lot more organized though with google apps but hard to justify for that price. I would need the $10 version instead of $5 since the $5 one doesn't have Vault which logs emails

[Relic]

Chmod and Chown are your friends.