Amazon WorkMail Basic Email Hosting

There is a dizzying array of cloud hosted email services available for those offices that rely on Outlook/Microsoft software, and now Amazon is jumping into the mix with their new “WorkMail” solution.

Simple Hosted Mail

They are competing directly with Microsoft’s 365 solutions, in that all of the services you get will work on Outlook and Microsoft based security (corporate Active Directory).

Their price point of $4 per user, goes directly after Microsoft’s entry level ($5/month), but does not include HD Video Conferencing. Microsoft includes HD Conferencing, but it is just SKYPE which is completely free.

Both offer 50GB of email storage. The only feature that Amazon does NOT offer is regular file storage (1TB).

Noticebly absent from both is any statement regarding online backups. If you download your mail locally via Outlook, then this should not be a major issue in the event of a catastrophic cloud event, but we recommend some sort of synchronized backup solutions in any event.

So if you all you need is a very simple, secure email account that works with Outlook, then this new offering from Amazon seems to be a decent fit.

Things get considerably more complicated when you start to evaluate MS Office subscriptions with hosted email, in which case Microsoft’s solutions usually trump most other offerings.