Hey everyone! Microsoft seems to be pushing 365 pretty hard, and a lot of our clients are transitioning away from on-prem mail servers soon. However, one client is determined to stick with their on-prem setup, even if it costs a bit more. The catch is that Microsoft support has mentioned that the "new Outlook" doesn't support on-premises Exchange mailboxes. Yet, they also say that once Outlook classic is phased out, users with on-prem Exchange need to switch to the new version. That creates a bit of a problem. Does anyone know of a solid alternative to Outlook that can handle on-prem Exchange mail accounts, calendars, contacts, and to-do lists?
6 Answers
A lot of small businesses still rely on Outlook and aren’t ready to transition to other options. I heard about another email client on Steve Gibson's SecurityNow podcast, but changing can be a big leap for many. It’s definitely an adventure!
Have you thought about using OWA instead? If you ditch the new Outlook, you could switch to LibreOffice for your other Office needs, too. The new Outlook is just a wrapper and has some security issues. Plus, classic Outlook is supported until 2029, so why not hang onto that?
Absolutely! But OWA has a long way to go for managing shared mailboxes effectively.
You might want to check out eM Client. It’s been getting good reviews recently and could work well with on-prem setups.
We've completely banned the new Outlook from our domain and are sticking with the old version. The inability to support on-premises mailboxes is a huge drawback for us. I definitely recommend the classic version over the new one.
Doesn't shared mail also work in classic? Can't believe they removed that from the new version.
It's funny how we keep going back to classic Outlook. I feel like the new version is just trying to do too much and missing the mark in features we actually need.
Exactly! Classic Outlook handled everything just fine, and I wish they wouldn’t have messed with a good thing.
You could just continue using the classic Outlook. It's considered deprecated but it’s still functioning well for now, and Microsoft will probably keep it around for a while longer. A lot of features are still supported and Exchange SE works with it fine.
Also, it looks like Microsoft is gradually adding more support for the new Outlook with on-prem connections—check the roadmap to see what's coming!
But OWA doesn't have the same features as classic Outlook—it just can't compete.