As many of you may already know, I stated a new consulting company named , “Agramont Services”. For over 10 years in the IT and Hosting business, I thought it would be pretty simple to have all of my IT needs in order to get my business on the Internet and all of the other IT requirements. Man, what a headache. It’s not that setting all of this is hard, but it still requires some research time to figure out what you want to do. Below is my quick and dirty list of the various websites and services that I used when starting my business.
- Domain Name: Misk
- Website: Aspnix.com
- Pricing: $77.70 (Shared Web Hosting, Personal Plan)
- Services Provided
- IIS 7 - 7 sites, 10 GB Data
- SQL Server 2005 – 3 DB, 2 GB
- SQL Server 2008 – 1 DB, 2 GB
- DNS Domain Management
- Business Email: Microsoft Online Services (Trial) – When I was looking for a Hosted Exchange offering, I thought Microsoft’s platform
- Pricing: Per User/Month: $15.00 (There are lots of other options and price plans, but this was the one I was evaluating)
- Exchange Server 2007
- SharePoint Serer 2007
- Live Meeting Server
- Business Email: Sherweb Hosting (Purchases)
- Pricing: Per User/Month: $8.95
- Exchange Server 2007
- Minimum Accounts: 1 (we purchased 2).
- ActiveSync to connect to your Windows Mobile device: Included
- Blackberry support ((Activation Fee: $29.95) $9.95/month ). I didn’t need this, but maybe you do.
- SharePoint Serer 2007
- Includes 100 MB Site (of course you can pay for more.
- Live Meeting Server
- Corporate Instant Messaging and Presence
- Web Conferences (audio only available when using the client)
- Audio Conference is NOT included
- Audio Bridge: ConferenceCalls.com
- Pricing: $30 (This is just what I purchased. Your pricing will vary depending on a number of variables)
- I found these guys to provide a really low price and the service worked great
- Rates (US):
- 2.7¢ / min. Toll & Dial Out
- 3.7¢ / min. Toll-Free Dial In
- Call Routing: 800PBX
- Pricing: $9.99 for 300 minutes
- Have a professional 800,866,888 phone number for your business
- Defining extensions that will then connect a call to your mobile, home, or other phone number.
- Includes Voicemail, customized “announcements” during connection wait times.
- Audio/Web Bridge: Go To Meeting
- Pricing: Per User/Month: $49.95
- Unlimited audio/web Conferences per month
- Integration with Outlook Clients
- Faxing: OneSuite
- Pricing: Per User/Month: $49.95
- Faxes are forwarded to up to five email accounts
- Unlimited incoming
- Unlimited Outgoing
So here is the short story. I started out with the Microsoft offering for Hosted Exchange using a Trial service. The bad part is they require a minimum of 5 accounts for their top package which includes SharePoint and Office Communication Server. Since I only needed two accounts, I went with a different hoster. Also, I used the Audio Bridge Service from http://www.conferencecalls.com/ for a few weeks and then I went with http://GoToMeeting.com for my audio and web conferencing needs. Because of that, I removed the previous costs from the monthly and annual service.
| Service | per user | Unit Price | Monthly | Annual |
| Misk | | | | $ 10.00 |
| Website | | | | $ 77.70 |
| Business Email | $ 8.95 | $ 2.00 | $ 17.90 | $ 214.80 |
| Audio Bridge | | $ 30.00 | | |
| Call Routing | | $ 9.99 | $ 9.99 | $ 119.88 |
| Audio/Web Bridge | | $ 49.95 | $ 49.95 | $ 599.40 |
| Faxing | | $ 2.95 | $ 2.95 | $ 35.40 |
| | | TOTALS | $ 80.79 | $ 1,057.18 |
This is what I used to get me started, but it doesn’t mean that it’s the best option for you or required for your kind of business. I didn’t include the cost for a P.O. Box (I use UPS Store), Phone (I used Vonage), Bookkeeping, etc. I hope to post about those topics soon.
Have questions? Post a comment! Found a better service? Post a comment!