Update (12.26.08): I wanted to post an update to my original review below. After I had my initial problems with their service, 01.com was incredibly responsive and proactive in not only helping me get an understanding of the origins of the problems, but improving overall communication with all of their customers. I did a great deal of competitive analysis, and even tried several competitors, but no one matched 01.com in service, support, and reliability. They clearly have the scale to not only always make sure that they are constantly upgrading and tweaking the latest version of Zimbra hosting, but the size of their service and operation helps make sure that they are getting help directly from the software vendor. While it may seem weird, after reading my scathing review below, to understand why I stuck with 01.com, it really came down to me gaining a greater understanding of the variables that could cause service disruption, and that I felt I had transparency into their operation and practices. Their new newsletters, e-mail updates, and admin tools have been great in helping me manage my hosting service. While the initial failure below was certainly a troubling event, they have done a great deal to improve the quality of the service, and I have been very happy with 01.com since then. I don’t plan on leaving any time soon.

Original Post: I’m going to keep this rant brief. I own my own domain (clearly) and so I need to use a mail host in order to manage my messaging. I’ve used Horde, Exchange Hosting, and most recently, Zimbra though 01.com. First off, I want to say that I absolutely love Zimbra. It is an amazing, standards-based competitor to Microsoft Exchange, and works incredibly well with the Mac. It supports CalDAV, iSync integration, and fully works with the iPhone over-the-air. I loved the functionality, and it just worked perfectly.

No, the problem isn’t with Zimbra, it is with my (ex) host, 01.com. This Monday afternoon my e-mail went down. This has actually happened before, so I wasn’t terribly concerned. However, after checking their blog, it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t a minor outage, it was a major crash. All of my mail, contacts, and calendars, were gone. About 12 hours later my e-mail started coming in, but none of my old info was restored, nor did any of the messages that should have arrived during the outage get delivered.

So, here I am, days later, and I am still without my data. This is unbelievably unacceptable, and has been a tremendous, stupendous example of an epic fail. I am so frustrated I am switching to Google hosting, which doesn’t offer the same functionality, but at least I know Google won’t go down.

Well, there you have it. 01.com blew it. They had a great product, but lousy reliability and support. I really wish 01.com could deliver a reliable product, because Zimbra is certainly the best messaging platform for my needs, and so I would love to see 01.com prove me wrong in the future. However, for now, they won’t be getting any more of my money, and I’d strongly caution you against giving them your business.

[UPDATE]: I just got a call from a manager at 01.com who went into great detail on the cause of the problem, what is being done to fix it, and more. While I have still had an incredibly frustrating experience over the past week, it was comforting to finally to have the chance to talk to someone about it. Please see the comments for an official 01.com response.

[UPDATE 2]: So the string of letdowns continues… See the comments for more details. We’ll see if they keep their promises.

[UPDATE 3]: My mail started coming back late Friday night. We’ll see what got recovered tomorrow.

Today at Apple’s WWDC developer event they announced “MobileMe”, a replacement for the “.Mac” suite of services. “MobileMe” will enable a user to keep their contacts, calendars, e-mail, synchronized across all devices via push. It also offers enhanced photo sharing capabilities that will be integrated into the iPhone and new website, as well as better data synchronization courtesy of iDisk. All of these new web applications and services can leverage “MobileMe’s” new 20GB of storage space.

So, the question inevitably becomes, “is it worth $99?”. For me, the answer is a resounding, “no”. There are a couple of major snags in the offering. First of all, my e-mail is associated with this domain, and so I have no interest in getting a “me.com” e-mail address. I have scoured the new documentation, but it doesn’t mention allowing you to do an MX forward so that you could associate a personal domain with these services. Major bummer.

Second, the services don’t match the price. $99 is a hefty sum for synchronization services. I use a Zimbra mail host for my personal data management, and it provides roughly the same functionality (disclosure: I work for Yahoo, which owns Zimbra, but this has nothing to do with why I use it).  The Zimbra hosting allows me to keep my personal domain, and offers an iSync conduit that keeps my address book and calendar in sync across all of my devices and has a web interface for accessing my e-mail, calendar, and contact list.  iTunes also supports syncing iPhone contacts with Gmail and Yahoo!, and I imagine that both of these companies will offer native apps for the iPhone to help keep everything up-to-date.

If you combine one of these PIM solutions with a free file storage solution like the most excellent Dropbox you can replicate these services for a much cheaper cost.  I pay around $6 a month for Zimbra hosting from 01.com and Dropbox is currently free.  Sure, you may not get everything managed in a single place with the extreme elegance and simplicity of an Apple product, but you do get a more flexible solution.  Is “MobileMe” for me?  Certainly not.  Is it a great service that would be perfect for my mom?  Definitely.