Thread: BES sync using Godaddy Exchange - any users

Has anyone used Godaddy's Exchange and BES program? I'm very happy w. my current Exchange/BES provider but am always looking to save $. I talked to a godaddy person today (about a domain I'm moving there) and was told I could use Godaddy's Exchange mail and it included BES to sync my calendar/contacts/tasks in addition to email delivery.

If anyone has any experience with this, I'd really appreciate any feedback you can provide. Switching my Exchange/BES provider is going to be an enormous PITA but saving money comes first.

Thanks!

Sorry, haven't heard anything.

Originally Posted by sunkast

Sorry, haven't heard anything.

Thanks...I don't know why but I'm just a little skeptical of "how easy" and "not a big deal" it is...Exchange/BES is never either of those based on my prior experience.

I know godaddy has been around for a while but how long have they offered this service?

it is significantly cheaper then my current provider so you really have me thinking i should switch too. On average it appears that they offer more storage and better features for about 50% of the price of other bes providers.

I think i'm going to give them a call this week and try to get more details from them. I'm getting a too good to be true sorta vibe here.

If you make the switch please let me know how it goes.

Originally Posted by sherb

I know godaddy has been around for a while but how long have they offered this service?

it is significantly cheaper then my current provider so you really have me thinking i should switch too. On average it appears that they offer more storage and better features for about 50% of the price of other bes providers.

I think i'm going to give them a call this week and try to get more details from them. I'm getting a too good to be true sorta vibe here.

If you make the switch please let me know how it goes.

I need to follow-up with them again, but I think the key question to ask them is: does godaddy have a licensed copy of Blackberry Enterprise Server that they manage?

I need to ask that b/c on their site under the Exchange/Blackberry discussion, it says "to use your Blackberry smartphone with Hosted Exchange Email, you must have a Blackberry Enterprise Server as part of your calling plan." In the case of my provider (Verizon), I believe the extra $15/mo I pay for the Exchange plan is only for the increased bandwidth required for Exchange. I don't believe Verizon has a BES that they provide as part of their plan.

I'll keep posting what I find here...if it'll work, that would be great, but as I said before, I'm going to be 100% sure before making any changes b/c it'll be extremely disruptive if it is in fact too good to be true.

agreed.

Any idea the best way to dump all my current content from my provider so that if go daddy are as good as they look i can import it there?

Originally Posted by sherb

agreed.

Any idea the best way to dump all my current content from my provider so that if go daddy are as good as they look i can import it there?

Right before you move your MX records, export your Outlook/Exchange file to a .pst file. Then once you're up and running on godaddy, you import the .pst file into the new profile (that links to your godaddy exchange file). You'll need to make sure you either wipe your blackberry or otherwise get the prior Exchange data removed. Then, once godaddy's exchange file is running smoothly with the imported .pst data, re-run enterprise activation.

I'm not getting too excited about it yet...I'm really skeptical that godaddy is running a BES. In other words, I wouldn't suggest that anyone pull the trigger on moving an exchange file before being 110% sure you're not going to find yourself at godaddy with exchange but no BES...if you end up w. that, you're screwed and will either move back to your existing provider or go w. BIS.

Originally Posted by sherb

agreed.

Any idea the best way to dump all my current content from my provider so that if go daddy are as good as they look i can import it there?

Ok, I just talked to godaddy and they DO NOT have a BES. In other words, they provided hosted Exchange but not hosted BES...you'll still need to have BES provider (which is what I was afraid of after reading their Blackberry help site). Verizon doesn't offer BES, so if you switch to godaddy, you'll still need someone to host your BES.

I was all jazzed to save some $$, but no luck.

Originally Posted by snmemx

Ok, I just talked to godaddy and they DO NOT have a BES. In other words, they provided hosted Exchange but not hosted BES...you'll still need to have BES provider (which is what I was afraid of after reading their Blackberry help site). Verizon doesn't offer BES, so if you switch to godaddy, you'll still need someone to host your BES.

I was all jazzed to save some $$, but no luck.

me too. ohh well i'll continue with mail2web for now.

Came across this post and wanted to clarify. BES IS, in fact, available as part of our Hosted Exchange offering. In order to take advantage of this support you'll need to sign up for the Individual Plus Mobile or Group Plan with more than one mailbox. This link takes you to our plans - Hosted Exchange Email

Let me know if you need some help getting started.

Originally Posted by GoDaddy

Came across this post and wanted to clarify. BES IS, in fact, available as part of our Hosted Exchange offering. In order to take advantage of this support you'll need to sign up for the Individual Plus Mobile or Group Plan with more than one mailbox. This link takes you to our plans - Hosted Exchange Email

Let me know if you need some help getting started.

Ok. for example if i were to get individual mailbox plan i would be able to use OWA aswell as have bes access?

or do i need to sign up for a mailbox plan and then add bes services with you aswell?

sherb,

If you choose the Individual Plus Mobile plan you'll have access to OWA, Windows Mobile and BES. It also includes a free download of Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008.

I'm almost ready to make the switch then... wish there was a free trial or something. I will look into a little more but most likely i will be moving my services it looks like now.

Originally Posted by GoDaddy

Came across this post and wanted to clarify. BES IS, in fact, available as part of our Hosted Exchange offering. In order to take advantage of this support you'll need to sign up for the Individual Plus Mobile or Group Plan with more than one mailbox. This link takes you to our plans - Hosted Exchange Email

Let me know if you need some help getting started.

To clarify here, does GoDaddy own a fully licensed Blackberry Enterprise Server that they're managing internally on behalf of their Exchange clients?

GoDaddy....thanks for chiming in. It's helping me as well on the decision.

I'm currently at network solutions but could soon switch (within a day or so!)

So, if I want to have two blackberry's work on the exchange server my total cost is $9.99 x 2 = $19.98? Is there an additional "blackberry fee" per phone as some of the other provider's are charging (roughly $10/per phone)?

2 GB storage
1 mailbox
FREE Microsoft Outlook 2007 or
Entourage 2008
(valued at $109.95)
Mobile access to contacts,
calendar and email —
no setup fee!

I just don't want to be missing something. Also, are you microsoft gold certified?

Originally Posted by snmemx

To clarify here, does GoDaddy own a fully licensed Blackberry Enterprise Server that they're managing internally on behalf of their Exchange clients?

I'm still not sure if it's their own bes server but through their control panel and owa i have issued a activation code for the test berry i wanted to setup. but me being stupid i forgot to activate a bes data plan on that line. so hopefully later today i will be able to test it out. but i do have to say that so far i'm very impressed with their service. their dashboard takes a bit of getting used to but other than that i'm loving it!

btw not mentioned in the above package they will throw in a domain for one year for around $3 aswell. My previous BES provider made me use theirs.

I wouldn't recommend GoDaddy's service to anyone. Because of price I have tried 3 times to switch to their Outlook + Mobile plan for $9.99 and I don't think any time has lasted longer than a couple of weeks.

The first two times I switched to them I had issues with GoDaddy's system clearing out my old MX records. Although they were gone from the domain manager (the part I have control over) they never fully purged from GoDaddy's side, so for weeks I had two priority 0 MX records. It took me about 2 weeks to figure out what was going on. I suspect that a person that knows more than me would have done an MX record lookup right away, but since I saw no issues with the MX records in the domain manager, it didn't dawn on me for a long time that the problem might lie there.

The third and final time was just this week. Calendar and Contacts sync'd just fine (I rarely use tasks/notes) but email was a different story. Email would be pushed to the device without a problem. Mail read/deleted/replied to on my device would show up on Outlook in the same state, however, anything I read or deleted on my computer would remain unread in my BES inbox on the BlackBerry. There was absolutely no sync between PC and device, only between device and PC.

I tried resending service books, turning wireless reconcile on and off, running activation again, deleting and then re-adding my device to the account...none of which solved the problem.

So I remain convinced that GoDaddy is not a reliable provider of BES services. Also, their customer service agents are clueless when it comes to BES matters.

I use Go Daddy UNFORTUNATELY. I have had them for over a year and I would not advise anyone to use Go Daddy for Exchange Blackberry services. Their tech support personel are useless and know NOTHING about BES or Exchange servers. E-mail takes 30 minutes after landing on their Exchange server before I see it on my Blackberry. Their servers malfunction and are S L O W and the worst thing is that no one can help you. I set up a new device, entered the pin then invoked "activate" which should send an activation password E-mail, which never happened. My device was unusable for a solid week before their tech support people did anything about their downed server. What was worse was that it almost took an act of congress to get the phone support nimbas to understand that the issue was that their server was DOWN. My service is 30 minutes to update my mobile device for E-mail or contacts or calendar and will never get fixed and there is NO ONE to go to at Go Daddy. I am not sure who this guy is that responded from Go Daddy as he sounds like he cares, but believe me, you will never get that guy (you'll notice he is nameless) or anyone else on the phone who knows anything about BES and they refuse to let you talk to anyone who does. GO DADYY SUCKS for BES Exchange services, stay away at all costs.