I was recently passed a paper that offered a comparison between Office 365 and POP3/IMAP and asked to ‘dumb it down’ – initially I was insulted, then I read it, failed to understand most of it and agreed it needed some simplification!
Your current email probably works fine most of the time, if there is the odd glitch you cope or call your IT support provider, so what’s the problem? Does the IT industry and Microsoft in particular just want you to change in order to increase their massive profits? Of course we do!
I’m joking of course (at least from a Your IT perspective, I can’t speak on behalf of Microsoft), but there are some very good reasons to switch over to Office 365:
Security – it’s a huge issue. Office 365 offers a secure connection, POP/IMAP Hosting doesn’t – simple as.
Synchronicity – Office 365 syncs email across all devices meaning you can find the email you sent from the office PC on your phone when you’re out and about. The calendar also syncs across devices so you know what you’re doing and when. Your contacts also sync. With POP/IMAP each device operates separately, Office 365 is joined up.
Set-up – it’s relatively easy to set up, with no technical knowledge or server information. I set mine up on my phone, all by myself. All I had to know was my email address and password. Downloaded the Outlook app, typed in my email and password and my inbox was right there. Now my boss can email me at the weekends! Great.
Storage – Office 365 provides 50GB of storage, POP3/IMAP mailbox sizes are usually smaller.
Savings – An office 365 subscription could save you money; less storage requirements means less disk space, disk space costs money.
I call these the 5 ‘S’s’ because there’s 5 of them and they all start with ‘S’ – this was by luck rather than by design.
For those of you more technically minded than me the original information I have (probably badly) ‘interpreted’ can be found here.
If you don’t speak IT then give us a call and someone who translates IT to English all day will talk you through it!
In conclusion – Office 365 better than POP3/IMAP (I think)!