Microsoft Outlook is unsuitable for small business. The software is expensive, incapable, over-weight, restrictive and unstable. In the long run using Outlook will be expensive in terms of lost productivity and support for downtime. The only reason for using Outlook is to connect to the costly Exchange server.

Outlook is Expensive

Outlook costs money to acquire - a license for every computer it's running on. This is about $100 per workstation. It will have to be upgraded to stay current and supported. It works out to about $50 per workstation per year. For a firm with 20 employees that's $1000/yr.

If Outlook fails - which is common - support from Microsoft is $250 per incident. Onsite support from a local IT firm will range from $60 - $120 per hour. How much is lost with employee downtime is company specific but, a cost of $100 per hour of downtime is common. If Outlook needs support once a quarter you'll average $1520 per workstation per year; $190 per hour of down time - two hours of downtime per quarter - four quarters per year.

Altogether this means that Outlook costs $2520 per workstation per year.

Outlook is Incapable

Many users are familiar with the Contact and Calendar of Outlook - a nice add on. However sharing Contact and Calendars without the use of an Exchange server is difficult. The softare that costs $2520 per year doesn't proviede the features that a small business would want or need. To enable the sharing of this information you'll need Exchange - which will run about $1200 on top of Windows Server ($1200) and hardware ($2000). Don't forget to factor in Exchange support - and expense of at least $1000 per year.

Outlook is Over Weight

If you're using Outlook in the SMB and don't have Exchange then Outlook is overkill. Why enter contacts that are difficult to share? Why use a calendar system that's not fully integrated with your other users? All those extra expensive and un-usable features - overkill = wasted money.

Outlook is Restrictive

Have you ever tried to move from Outlook to another system - it's not easy. Outlook only plays nice with other Microsoft products - you're locked in. Have you ever tried to move Outlook from one workstation to another? Again not an easy task - that is time and money lost. What if your workstation crashes? All your Outlook data is toast - hope you had a backup!

Outlook is Unstable

The design of Outlook and storing all your messages and information in one large file slows the system down. Worst of all if Outlook crashes and corrupts the PST file all information is lost - not just one contact or message.

Drop Outlook Now

To save time, money and relieve stress you should stop using Outlook right now! Install ThunderBird from Mozilla - it can import from your Outlook. Once running on ThunderBird you can easily export Contacts and messages for use in other systems - your Microsoft only restrictions are lifted.

ThunderBird is free so your licensing fees are eleminated. ThunderBird has free community based support through forums and mailing lists - there are thousands of IT consulting firms (like Edoceo) that will provide support.

Another option is to migrate over to using the Google Apps. They will provide - for free - email, shared contacts and calendars to your small business up to 100 users. Migration from Outlook directly to Google Apps is not easy, but with an Outlook to ThunderBird to Google Apps migration plan it's not that diffcult. And once you finish the migration (about 2hr for 7800 contacts/messages) it's not something you'll have to address ever again.