Mailtrust has two exciting new announcements to share:

Hosted Exchange 2007

We are now offering Hosted Exchange 2007. With Hosted Exchange, you get all the benefits of a Microsoft Exchange® environment, without the headaches of hosting it yourself. And, what’s better, you can combine Hosted Exchange with our Noteworthy service, on a per-user basis. This cost effective and flexible solution ensures that you get exactly what you need when it comes to your email: Hosted Exchange for users who need the powerful collaboration tools that come from Microsoft Exchange, and Noteworthy hosted email (our lower-cost, yet fully featured email hosting solution) for everyone else. We expect that this Hosted Exchange + Noteworthy offering will benefit you by minimizing cost and maximizing productivity. The choice is now yours.

Enhanced Control Panel

We have also launched the latest release of our administrative control panel. We’ve completely redesigned the user interface and improved navigation. Our customers will still have full access to all of the tools they’ve always had, in addition to some exciting new tools built around the introduction of Hosted Exchange 2007. Now administrators can manage all of their mailboxes (Hosted Exchange 2007 and Noteworthy) through a single application. To learn more about Control Panel 3.0, you can view our special recorded webinar.

Over the next few months we will slowly be upgrading current customers over to the new control panel. You can also choose to send a request through the ticketing section of your control panel to request an upgrade earlier.
To purchase or view pricing for Hosted Exchange 2007, log in to the control panel and click Upgrades. Each mailbox includes a license to Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008, which can be downloaded online.

And, as always, the customer care team is always available, and you can contact us directly any time at support@mailtrust.com.

• Student's for Free Culture at VT hosted an awesome talk given by Richard Stallman last month, so we hit them up to see how we could bring more interesting speakers to Blacksburg. On Wednesday the 23rd, Mailtrust and Students for Free Culture bring you Nelson Pavlosky to give his popular talk on Free Speech, Free Software and Free Culture.

  When: Wednesday, April 23, 2008, 6:00 PM Eastern
  Where: Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business, room 30
  As usual, Mailtrust will provide pizza.

• Tech Talk 3: Practical Web Semantics
  Join Mailtrust again on Monday April 28th for a presentation by Manu Sporny of Digital Bazaar covering the Semantic Web.

  When: Monday, April 28, 2008, 6:00 PM Eastern
  Where: Mailtrust, 775 University City Blvd, Blacksburg VA
  RSVP: techtalk@mailtrust.com (yes, more free pizza!)

Mailtrust is a great company on so many levels.

Not only did they give me my first “real person” job, saving me from having to have the awkward “we’re cutting you off financially” conversation with my parents, but they have supported me through some tough times as well.

On April 16th I was involved in the shootings at Virginia Tech and instantly the dreams about what I was doing with my life after graduation were flushed down the toilet. I knew I had to push forward, graduate, and get a job, but my newfound fear of confined places and the loss of direction made it hard for me to focus on my future.

Nonetheless, I had been scanning the job boards for some positions that I could apply for when I came across the “Primary Money Wrangler” position at Mailtrust – this one got me hooked, and excited. With a title like “Primary Money Wrangler” who wouldn’t want to work here!? I went into the interview, was asked tough questions, and was treated like any other candidate rather than someone who had just gone through a traumatic event. I’m not sure why that surprised me, since no one at Mailtrust knew my situation, but it was a relief to experience an ounce of normalcy again. And the best part: I got the job!

During my first month at Mailtrust, I didn’t talk to anyone about what had happened to me or what I was going through because I was trying to start over and I felt like it wasn’t something that others wanted to hear about. I didn’t want to be treated special any way.

However, it eventually became more apparent to those around me that I was having trouble coping. Rather than being overbearing and nosey, which many others who knew my secret were, my co-workers were so helpful. If I ever needed to go for a walk or if I couldn’t get into work they understood. Everyone respected my space when I needed it and didn’t push the subject but were always there for me if I wanted to talk.

I’m grateful to my co-workers for having stood by me, put up with my antics, and helped me through the toughest time in my life. I am truly proud to work at Mailtrust because I know I’m part of an incredible group of people. So even though the week of April 16th will be a tough one, I know I have great people to lean on. People that understand what it was like because even though they weren’t in the building – they were here and all of them know: “Once a Hokie, Always a Hokie”.

Thank you, Mailtrust.

A blogger from SMB IT Pros recently posed the following questions, regarding the relevance of Microsoft in the IT marketplace:

Why do I need Exchange, Sharepoint, or Office to run my business? What value do they add beyond the free or nearly free applications I can now find online?

These are not new questions, and they’re questions we ourselves have asked. In fact, our business was originally founded on the idea that we should offer an alternative to Microsoft Exchange, which we have done successfully through Noteworthy. Yet, we have learned a few things over the years, and those lessons have driven us to offer Hosted Exchange, in addition to Noteworthy.

- Microsoft products are still more feature-rich than their alternatives. Compare Word to Google Docs. Compare SharePoint to any of the web-based alternatives. Compare Exchange to Noteworthy. What you’ll find in every case is that Microsoft products bring more to the table, even if they also typically bring a higher price tag and a deeper level of complexity. Every business needs to do a cost-benefit analysis, but the reality is that many businesses need the features that Microsoft software applications have to offer.

- People are used to Microsoft products. Case in point, about 60% of our Noteworthy customers use Microsoft Outlook every day to check their email, even though we offer a feature-rich webmail client. People have grown used to Outlook. They like it and they don’t want to change. And why would they? Outlook is still the most powerful email client in the world.

- Businesses want it. While Noteworthy has been a huge success (we host more than 750,000 paid business mailboxes on the Noteworthy email hosting platform), we were missing opportunities every day because we didn’t host Exchange. People in the startup world can speculate all day long about whether or not Microsoft is relevant (of course, some of them also argue that email doesn’t work anymore), but I can tell you right now, we talk to businesses every day that want Hosted Exchange. And with 180 million mailboxes deployed worldwide (according to the Gartner Group), I don’t think Exchange is going away anytime soon.

I believe that some people enjoy hating Microsoft because they're the big guys. But the reality is, Microsoft is still the greatest software company in the world. And many of their products are the most relevant in the world.
So, if that’s the case, why do we still offer Noteworthy? Because we believe that people, and businesses, want choice. They want successful, relevant alternatives. Here are some examples of choice I can see, just by looking around our office:

- I can't imagine giving up Microsoft Windows on my computer. But, I'd estimate that 1/4 of my employees use Ubuntu, an open-source operating system.

- I haven’t fired up Outlook in almost three years. But, while I use webmail every day, many of my employees use Outlook, Thunderbird, and some other obscure email clients.

- I am addicted to my Blackberry. But if you walk around our office, you’ll see iPhones, Windows Mobile, and all kinds of other mobile devices.

And, for our customers, a choice of mail platforms is starting to become a really big deal, too. Some businesses want Exchange. Some businesses want a lower-cost Exchange alternative, which is Noteworthy if you host your email with us. And an increasing number of customers want the best of both worlds (some employees need the full capabilities of Exchange while others do not).

The bottom line: Microsoft matters. Choice rules.

We are excited to announce the release of Noteworthy Sync for Blackberry, the latest addition to our Noteworthy product offerings. This feature has been highly requested by our user base, so we are pleased to add it to our growing line of products for Noteworthy Sync.

Noteworthy Sync for Blackberry is designed for customers who enjoy using our webmail product to manage their calendar, contacts, and tasks, but also want to synchronize this data between webmail and their Blackberry device. You can even schedule automatic synchronizations, which will ensure that your information is always up to date.

If you are an Outlook user, you can directly synchronize your Blackberry with Outlook as usual, or you can use our Noteworthy Sync for Outlook. Either way, you will now be able to enjoy having your data with you on the road, from your desktop, and from any internet-connected device, anywhere.

Purchasing Sync

• Customers who signed up online for email hosting service after October 1, 2007 already have Noteworthy Sync included in their pricing package—just log in to the control panel and select Collaboration / Sync to get started.

• For those customers who signed up online before October 1, 2007, the pricing depends on the number of mailboxes you have with us and includes a free upgrade to 10GB of storage per mailbox. Log in to the control panel and select My Account / Upgrade Services / Upgrade Email Plans to purchase the Sync upgrade.

• All other customers can determine pricing online—just log in to the control panel, select Collaboration / Sync, and follow the instructions to get started.

For more information about Noteworthy Sync for Blackberry, and to hear first-hand impressions from a real Blackberry addict (Pat, our CEO), check out this blog post: Why I Love My Blackberry More Than Ever.

Also, you can check out a YouTube video we created to show you how easy it can be to use Noteworthy Sync for Blackberry.