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Calendar, E-mail, and Contacts Program

We are a small graphic design firm that is MAC based. We are trying to find one program that can replace the three we are currently using for calendar, email and contacts. We currently use Outlook Express for our email, Meeting Maker for our calendar and Now contacts. We looked into Microsoft Office 2001 - Entourage. Looks good on paper, but it cannot share one common database for addresses and is $500 per license. What do other MAC based firms use? Is there one program that can replace the 3 we are currently using?

Deb Harrington
Princess of Power
in10city, inc.

We use Eudora for email, and Now Up-to-Date for calendar and Now Contact for our database.

Terri Yuen
Malahat Group International
A Palmer Jarvis DDB Company
The DDB Worldwide Communication Group Inc.

We went to Exchange Server at about $1200.00 for the software with a five client license. It will deal with Entourage clients on the Mac, has a great calendaring system and does allow the sharing of contacts amongst users. The drawbacks are:

1. It is a Microsoft product
2. It is a pain to administer and will require an expert to set up
3. It requires a server, although it does not place a lot of demands on the hardware it probably should not be served from your C&P machine
4. Microsoft is changing their licensing rules to require annual subscriptions. More money for less is my bet.

One approach I wish I had considered was renting the same thing from an ASP or our ISP. One simple monthly fee without the hassle of adminstration and maintenance. If you go the route of having your own server make sure you have a v. large hard drive for the server since it fills up rapidly and the consequences of not catching it are potentially disastrous. HP used to sell a product that sounds the same only different called OpenMail. They sold it to Samsung which renamed it. I discovered it after having written the check to Microsoft but it sounded interesting.

Jasper Lawrence
Words & Images, Inc.

Have you looked into Microsoft Outlook (NOT Outlook Express)? It has a calendar and contact capabilities. You can even use it to invite people to meetings, and once they accept, it is automatically entered into your calendars.

Terry L. Jones, Jr. Harvey And Daughters

Lotus Notes does it all. It's worth whatever the price. The best part: it's not a Microsoft product.

Jim Belanger
The VIA Group

The Microsoft Outlook is what we use as well. We pay our internets/email provider for the service. We really like it and we also use it to schedule our several conference rooms.

Anna Parisi
GBL

We're facing a similar dilemma to the one posed in this thread. We are a split-platform company, with the creative team on Macs and the rest on PCs. We have a Linux server on-site (in our HQ, we have one remote office -- about 25 users total). It hosts both our e-mail and website. On the PC side, we have pretty much standardized on Outlook. On the Mac side, we've got mostly Entourage (2001 and X), with a Netscape or OLExpress thrown in for good measure. I'm trying to move everyone to Entourage. There are some issues with iCalendar events cross-platform. PC users can invite Mac users to meetings, but not the other way around. And, as one user mentioned in this thread, there's no shared database for contacts or calendars. We are exploring the possibility of switching to an Exchange server for e-mail, mostly so we can take advantage of the collaborative features. Our remote office already runs an Exchange server (the Linux server forwards mail to it, then Exchange forwards to the recipient). I'm not thrilled with the setup but am interested in both the shared database and Outlook Web Access for our frequent travelers. Switching all e-mail to Exchange brings up many issues, including for our users who are on OSX. EntourageX will not tap into Exchange yet (except via POP3, but then no shared calendar) and Outlook only runs in Classic mode. Also, Outlook for Mac does not check internet mail -- a big downside. Does anyone have any experience with a setup like this? Anyone know of other possible solutions?

Richard Heend
The MBC Group
St. Louis, MO

We are currently using Now Contact UP-to-Date for our group calendar and phone solicitation needs. I don't know much about it because it is new for us. So far so good. Everyone here seems to like it....it gives us everything we need from the group calendar standpoint. The AE's have no complaints regarding the Contact side of the software in tracking contacts and potential clients.

Caitilin
Ashley & Associates, Inc

We currently use ACT 2000 as our client/prospect database management tool. I was wondering if anyone has any other suggestions. We would really like something that is cross-platform as ACT is PC only. (I know there is a MAC version but it is totally incompatible with the PC version) The key functions we need are: contact information ability to document meetings, phone calls, etc.

Jerry Bray, COO
Harvey & Daughters Advertising

As I said previously, Exchange Server serving Outlook and Entourage clients does everything everyone seems to want. Shared contacts, shared calendar, email server. All cross-platform and pretty smooth. But, it is demanding of IT expertise to set it up and to fix it if it goes wrong.

Jasper Lawrence
Words & Images, Inc.

We use Now Contact for our client/prospect database. We also use Now Up-to-Date for our agency calendar software. Both programs work well, but we only have 8 people using these products since they are strictly for new business.

Alice Mathews
The Tombras Group

We recently upgraded our entire network and integrated a Microsoft Exchange Server for mail. We installed Outlook 2001 on all of our computers, hoping to have a fully integrated calendar/contact/ and email system. However, since the majority of the office works on Macs, we have run into some frustrating limitations of the Outlook 2001 for Mac software. The first drawback is that it does not support HTML based email. Because we produce HTML-based email for both self-promotional use and for our clients, we rely on our in-house email system to test and review before deployment. Not being able to send out tests internally is a huge drawback to the software for us. Also, we have been unable to view each other's calendars and appointments on the Macs without first setting up an invite. We are considering other options such as Entourage or Virtual PC, but I would be interested in knowing if anyone out there has had similar experiences and might have some insight before we invest even more time and money into coming up with a solution.

miriam corson