The core of the cost of operating one's own email system is hardware. Many more machines are required to run such things as gateways, directory servers, calendar sync servers, or other applications shared between employees. As your company grows, you may need to acquire more servers to act as message switches, or systems which can network multiple email servers.
As your business grows still larger, a mainframe may be needed to handle the load. These computers are more expensive still, require full-time staff, and may incur the cost of replacement parts—not to mention the fixed cost of backup media. Even if you choose to utilize a maintenance contract for the new hardware, these usually run 18% to 20% of the actual purchase cost of the original hardware.
Moving beyond the hardware, the software can present an unexpected but significant financial burden on your business. When you move out of the realm of consumer software and into the world of commercial and enterprise software, the price leaps by orders of magnitude.
Considering this, the costs of email management software that runs on the server can be relatively modest. In a pricing model that usually calls for licensure and payment on a per-user basis, the costs average out to roughly $80 per user mailbox in addition to an initial setup fee for the software.
