For years I’ve used Exchange to manage emails, calendars & tasks. I managed this locally on my own server & used powershell scripts to backup my emails.
I recently decided to move all of my eggs out of one basket. I didn’t really want to pay more for this service than I’m already paying, but I also didn’t want to lose any functionality. My email provider uses Open-Xchange for the above tasks so I wondered if I could migrate to that without any deal-breaking issues.
I uploaded 2 years worth of calendar data, emails & tasks to the system so I could test. The first thing I checked was my Android mobile. With Exchange I could sync my emails, calendars & tasks easily. The emails are SMTP & IMAP. Easy, that has native support in Android. Calendaring was next, for that I used DAVx from the app store, that connects to the calDAV server & works brilliantly. Tasks can also be synced via DAVx, but there’s no native way to access them in Android. OpenTasks to the rescue! (Also from the app store), it works great. Just wish it had a dark theme.
The above successfully proved I could do without Exchange on my mobile. But could I do the same on my Windows desktop? Also how will the backups work?
Stay tuned for part 2: Look out Outlook. You’re on the way out. Look.