IceWarp Cloud (which begins at $3.90 per user per month for the Standard edition) is a hosted email provider that ties in to Microsoft Office's service.
It features a combination of business-focused document editing, collaboration tools, team chat, and email functionality.
The Standard plan comes with 100 gigabytes (GB) of email storage and 1 terabyte (TB) of file sync storage capacity per user.
IceWarp Cloud is compatible with Microsoft Outlook, and has an intuitive design and a range of collaborative tools.
With a competitive feature set and ease of use, IceWarp Cloud aims to be a full replacement for Microsoft Office 365, but needs clearer security policies and should be less heavy-handed with its Outlook synchronization plug-in implementation.
Editors Choice winners Intermedia Exchange Email and Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium provide a more powerful and friction-free hosted email experience that is also familiar to many small to midsize businesses (SMBs).
Still, for small businesses yearning to get away from Microsoft, IceWarp Cloud is definitely worth a look, though you'll certainly find a larger, non-Microsoft application portfolio if you opt for Zoho Mail .
Then again, IceWarp is only just starting its productivity suite development so who knows where it will end up; it's certainly got a competitive price.
If you upgrade to the Professional tier for $7 per user per month, then you'll get 24/7 phone support, access to all desktop apps, and 99.99 percent guaranteed uptime.
A free 14-day trial is available on the company's website.
Getting Started
IceWarp Cloud offers a straightforward signup process.
It's mostly automated and collects common data such as contact information, mailing address, and phone number.
The one odd thing is that it asked for a credit card number during the signup process to verify "solvency." In general, I tend to shy away from requirements like this but I forged ahead regardless.
On the next screen, you create a subdomain of onice.io for your organization.
This can be replaced with your own domain later on if you want, but it gets you using the service immediately without having to configure your domain right away.
After the signup process is completed, you're given two different logins.
One is to the IceWarp WebClient, which gives you acess to mail, calendar, notes, and tasks.
The other is the IceWarp WebAdmin portal that lets you manage new domains and users as well as other server settings.
Setting up users was fairly easy, though importing them from another mail system will likely require an IT professional to help.
Once signed in, you have access to a nice web interface but you also have a desktop client for your Mac and Windows users.
While this is not typical, it's a nice extension for offline work.
What I did not like was the Microsoft Outlook synchronization app.
Rather than allowing a direct connection, it forces you to install a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that maintains synchronization by using custom sode.
In addition, the default install path automatically removes any other profile that was configured prior, which can catch an unwary user by surprise.
Even Google G Suite Business ($12 Per User Per Month at Google Workspace) , which also uses a third-party sync tool, wasn't quite this heavy-handed.
The IceWarp Cloud web client is reminiscent of Microsoft's own web client, Outlook Web Access (OWA), though with a little less feature depth.
In general, it's a typical mail client, though it provides access to calendar, contacts, chat, and tasks—each of which is located along the left-hand side of the screen, along with the inbox and various folders that contain sent items, junk mail, and so forth.
One very nice feature was the templates.
Even in Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium, templates are somewhat buried.
In the IceWarp Cloud client, they're front and center under the new menu.
For those who need access using an external client, that's available, too.
Secure IMAP and POP3 access are fully supported so you can connect your mobile devices as well as popular third-party email client software such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird.
As mentioned in the setup, however, if you want full calendar synchronization capabilities, then you'll need to use the IceWarp Cloud plug-in, which may or may not conflict with other plug-ins.
Also similiar to Google G Suite Business, IceWarp Cloud includes a full document-editing suite that's capable of handling most Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files right from the browser.
While not fully tested, in my anecodatal testing it did seem to hold up to its Microsoft Office-compatibility claim.
You'll also get is a file-sharing app, reminiscent of Dropbox (for Business) ($12.50 Per User Per Month at Dropbox Business) or OneDrive for Business, that can be installed for basic file sharing between team members.
IceWarp Cloud's built-in web chat, phone, and web meeting functionalities are feature-rich and comparable to what Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium offers its users.
I found most worked flawlessly within a browser window during my tests.
The standout feature is Team Chat which is similar to Microsoft Teams.
There are also two supporting smartphone apps; IceWarp IceChat (a text, video, and audio communications app), and Authenticator, a two-factor authentication (2FA) solution for added security and privacy.
Security and Privacy
In keeping with its strategy of leveraging third-party software, IceWarp Cloud uses an integrated version of Kaspersky Lab's antivirus (AV) engine, along with a variety of other tools to handle anti-spam and anti-phishing duties.
While effective at picking out spam and phishing attempts, it didn't seem to distinguish between the two.
While this isn't a major blocker (because phishing attempts can seem legitimate non-spam at times), it's far more helpful to have an additional callout to make it clear that the email in question is likely fake and trying to collect user details.
That being said, while not as distinguished on this front as Google G Suite Business, IceWarp Cloud worked on par with the spam and phishing capabilities of AtMail (2.00 Per User Per Month at atmail) .
Plus, the test spam emails I sent were caught, so it's safe to say that it works as advertised.
I'm an enormous fan of IceWarp's stance on sharing information.
They use three words: "We do not." However, what they don't spell out is the procedures surrounding internal access to your data by IceWarp employees.
The company's published policy simply states that they put in place "reasonable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures" to prevent unauthorized access.
There is also nothing spelled out in terms of how their data centers are safeguarded or if they hold SOC 2 and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 compliance.
While they are likely aboveboard, uncertainty in this area makes me a bit nervous.
They also make no mention of Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) support so healthcare-related businesses may need to look elsewhere.
Third-Party Integration
While the company makes good use of integrating third-party services into its core offerings, customers won't be as generously served when it comes to adding their own.
While IceWarp Cloud does provide a mature application programming interface (API) that's aimed at custom integrations, this means you'll need to hire developers to build, test, and support such integrations yourself.
There isn't a marketplace of prebuilt partner integrations like you'll find with Google and Microsoft.
So, if your business processes require integrations, then the added developer expertise is something you'll need to factor in.
Effectively, this makes IceWarp Cloud something of an island for those who don't possess the internal technical know-how to build the necessary plug-ins.
IceWarp Cloud tries hard to be a full replacement for Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium, but lands a bit short of that goal.
It offers little in terms of integration for the common user and it doesn't do a great job of spelling out its security policy.
Those dings aside, it does offer up an overall good experience and manages to reproduce a lot of what you would get from Microsoft.
It also goes without saying that business-level users will want the $7-per-user-per-month Professional edition, which makes the pricing somewhat less attractive when compared to other Microsoft competitors, such as Zoho Mail.
The Bottom Line
IceWarp Cloud is an integrated office suite with a robust set of features similar to Microsoft's Office 365 but lacking in overall design and technology.
SMBs preferring Microsoft's approach will be hard-pressed to switch over.
