nitrodesk touchdown 6.2.0012 ($19.99)
and
dataviz roadsync 2.5xxx ($9.99 – regularly $19.99)

background: so, i got sick of shitty google apps not syncing, google’s halfhearted integration efforts w/outlook, pitiful support (enterprise), their lack of support for use of gapps w/the android market, proprietary calendar apis, etc. and decided i’d go back to using exchange through a hosted exchange provider. previously, i’d used sherweb and left them because their service was pretty slow (they’re in eastern canada) – i figured i’d give them a shot again, and while their service’s speed was really improved, my route to their servers was really awful (300+ms). so i switched to 123together. they’ve been fine, and their premium mxlogic third party filtering is great (albeit $2.95/mo more)

after signing up for 123together, i needed to find a mail client. unfortunately, the email.apk built into most AOSP roms doesn’t support 2010 sp1. the htc sense exchange client is terrible, so i knew i’d have to look for a third party client.

i tried roadsync first, primarily because it was $10 cheaper and seemed to have most of the same features. the device i was using at the time was an EVO on sprint. first of all, configuration of exchange in roadsync is pretty simple. it does a good job of using autodiscover settings to configure the client. there are settings to specify maximum message download size, whether or not to use ssl, whether to store email on the sd card or device memory, etc. while roadsync is running and sync is enabled, there’s a roadsync icon that appears in the notification bar.

the interface of the main application is attractive and functional. the mail interface, however, isn’t all that great. (maybe i’ll add some screenshots, but i’m feeling lazy) – mail is a black screen with white/manila colored text, with green radio selection points on the left to select multiple messages. when selecting multiple items, and pressing menu, you’ve got an assortment of common functions including deleting, moving messages, marking as read, etc.

the calendar, like both exchange clients in this post is separate from the android calendar. roadsync’s calendar, however, doesn’t have any third party accessability capabilities, which means you’re stuck with a couple of boring, unattractive widgets, one for each function (except email). the calendar also doesn’t support categories, so every entry will show up under a single category. notifications for calendar entries are similar to AOSP roms’ and appear to use the same ui as the android notifications (or at least, a very close facsimile thereof)

contacts are probably the best part of roadsync. it’s capable of leveraging the android contact system, which means it’s really easy to add contacts using either roadsync’s editor or the android editor. you don’t have to maintain two databases of contacts (on the device and in the app).

roadsync also features task synchronization, which i don’t really use all that frequently. it opens a post-it-colored window where you can enter whatever content you like, which is then pushed to your exchange server. roadsync is also capable of adhering to IT policies for users whose IT depts enforce security policies for devices using activesync.

i did run into a few irritating quirks with roadsync, though. first, the lack of an api for third-party widgets to use is irritating. the in-built widgets suck, so you’re stuck with either no calendar widget or the crappy, unattractive roadsync ones. second, the mail interface, while it looks similar to the email.apk interface, is ugly and the rendering of some html email can cause a scrolling loop which makes it impossible to fully read the message as it continues to scroll infinitely, with the text or content of the message dropping below the viewable area. third, if you lose your data connection (either because of environmental factors or spotty coverage) the roadsync sync service will shut itself down (and you’ll know because the sync icon vanishes..confirmed via alogcat), and often won’t start back up again, leaving you without any mail synchronization until you notice and restart sync.

i’m also sort of unimpressed with dataviz’ support. they offer support via forums or a KB on their site. unfortunately, the KB on their site is really badly out of date (in most cases, referring to the android version’s beta or 2.x branch) and the support forum is full of unanswered support queries. while i haven’t had to use them myself, looking at their support site and forums is a bit disheartening. many reviews on the market point to their support being pretty poor as well.

so, all-in-all, i think roadsync is worth a try. they offer a 14-day trial via the android market, so you don’t have much to lose. i like the main app interface, simple configuration and relative ease of use, but i’m not so happy with the mail interface or crash-happy nature of the sync service on my devices (evo & G2/Desire Z, both running 2.2.1)

after using roadsync for a few days and feeling sort of underwhelmed, i tried nitrodesk touchdown. immediately after installing & launching touchdown, the quantity of options flabbergasted me. i’d never seen so many different configurable options. this is both a good and a bad thing, as you can tweak lots of different settings, but it’s also sometimes tough to find settings for each module, as they’re not all centrally located. the second thing i noticed was that i wasn’t really fond of the main application interface. it’s presented as a screen with a series of icons along the bottom, which allow you to access each of the individual functions of touchdown. i think the best way to describe touchdown is to say that it’s like outlook for your phone. while roadsync focuses on mail and calendar stuff with few tweakable options, touchdown is pretty much a full outlook-esque mobile client with contacts, notes, tasks, calendar and email access just like you’d get on your desktop. in fact, it even supports categories for messages, contacts and calendar events, as well as generating message rules to run on inbound email.

the mail interface itself is pretty pleasant. it allows two lines of text per message, with one being the subject and the second being the sender of the message. the window itself is white with black text, and messages can be categorized for easier identification. selection of multiple messages is handled with a checkbox on the right hand side of the panel, which i think is a little less intrusive than the obnoxious radio-button styled selection dingus implemented in roadsync. the mail reader itself is also nice, allowing pinch to zoom on multitouch devices, as well as having a set of zoom in/out buttons at the bottom. there is a set of quick-action buttons at the bottom allowing reply/fwd/reply to all/delete, etc without needing to invoke the menu. all in all, i like the mail client in touchdown better.

second, the calendar. again, the calendar is separate from the android calendar and looks pretty similar to the roadsync calendar, but there are a couple of differences. first, touchdown allows third party widgets to grab agenda information for use in widgets. this is awesome, since there’s no shortage of good third party calendar widgets available that support touchdown (my favorite being android agenda widget) and means that you aren’t forced to either use the bland touchdown default widget nor are you forced to go without one if you don’t care for the default. second, you can set categories for calendar events, and it seems to support just as many as outlook, with unique colors assigned to each. this allows you to view the calendar on the 30-day view and quickly recognize the category of events on the calendar.

third, the contacts. now, this sort of irks me- the contacts application is fully separate from the device’s built in contacts. in order to view contacts for your exchange account, you have to fire up touchdown and use the contacts section of the ui. you can copy your contacts from touchdown to your phone, but i found in some cases, that it can cause duplicate entries and it’s sort of kludgy. the interface for adding/navigating through contacts within touchdown looks great, with the colored categories available along the far left side of the panel. the lack of use of the android contact system is sort of annoying from a text messaging/social networking standpoint because it means that unless you copy your contacts to the phone from touchdown, you end up with an empty contact list and you have to go through another application to get them, or create separate shortcuts to that functionality on your homescreen. also, since there’s no integration w/android contacts, on sense and newer aosp roms, you won’t get contact photos unless they’re specified in outlook on the exchange server itself. if you have to add a contact, you need to do so from touchdown or it won’t show up in your exchange account. likewise, if you need to add a contact based on a phone number that called you, you have to go into touchdown and import from the phone list, creating a new contact or merging it with an existing one. again, really kludgy.

notes and tasks are what you’d expect. the notes sync feature is unique among these two apps, and will synchronize the notes you make on your device in touchdown with your outlook client on your pc. likewise with tasks.

touchdown’s support appears to be pretty awesome. nitrodesk, the developer of the app, has a google groups page that is constantly attended to by staff members and helpful users. again, i haven’t ever had to use their support, but they do seem a lot more professional and courteous, and the vast majority of reviews on the android market point to this being the case as well. i saw very few posts that hadn’t had some sort of intervention or assistance rendered by a staff member and in the majority of cases, it seemed as though a fix or workaround had been found for nearly every post i checked. the speed of development of touchdown is also exciting because they’re constantly adding new features, tweaking functionality and improving their product. the same can’t be said for roadsync, the last update for which (as of this post) was back in october 2010.

of the two applications i looked at here, i think that touchdown is a better product. it’s more actively developed, the developers have a much better client relationship and are willing to quickly fix issues with the product (not that i ran into any beyond weird usability quirks). i’m not a fan of the monolithic approach to synchronization. i like that they’ve emulated most of the functionality of a full outlook client within the application, but i don’t like that they’ve done that at the cost of forcing all of those functions to exist solely within touchdown unless you copy contacts to your device. mail sync was generally very reliable, and i infrequently encountered issues where sync wouldn’t occur, which usually was the result of waning data signal pausing the sync agent. i really don’t like that you can’t add contacts from the android dialer, but this sort of hearkens back to the monolithic approach they took to building the app. i think the price of touchdown is probably a bit steep for most users, however, it doesn’t bother me to pay $20 for a good product. all-in-all, i think despite the price, touchdown’s a better deal and i think nitrodesk deserves your business.

as an aside, i didn’t look at the free k9 mail client for android, nor did i check out moxiermail as i didn’t see a reason to. k9 is a fork of the default mail client and i sort of hate the default mail client anyway, and moxier doesn’t support anything *but* mail, and it’s the same price as touchdown, which makes it totally unattractive to me from any perspective. i hope this helps someone out.

last year, in may or so, i moved from using a linode vps for my mail and domain hosting, to using hosted exchange for mail and a shared host for the sites. the shared host for the sites has been perfect. i’ve had 99.999% uptime, the only time the sites have been down is during maintenance. this is better than my own uptime with my vps. (i should say that wasn’t any fault of linode who are totally awesome and if you’re in need of a vps, you should look them up.)

why do i pay for mail? there are a few reasons.

1. i don’t trust people with my data. companies that offer enterprise-grade email and communications platforms have a lot more incentive to keep shit private and protect your stuff.

2. i like uptime, i like reliability and i like being able to contact the host to have stuff resolved if something happens, rather than getting to lose mail or something.

3. i like supporting businesses who offer competent, well-engineered, reliable services.

i started off with the hosted exchange company, sherweb, who when i signed up were offering a competitive blend of services and price that was too good to pass up. i really like exchange and i really like outlook and owa. they’re extremely well-integrated, well-tested, reliable platforms for mta use, pc clients and web clients respectively. after having service with sherweb for around 4 months, i started noticing that it seemed like they had downtime two or three times a week. of course, this isn’t a huge deal, but the loss of performance and issues with their (terrible) barracuda hardware firewall/spam appliance made me want to try something else. i read some reviews and against my own better judgement (i despise google) i signed up for google apps premier.

google does lots of stuff i don’t agree with and lots of things that make me really nervous. they don’t do any one thing terribly well. their search algorithms aren’t all that great. their maps platform hasn’t really evolved since it was first released. gmail offers free mail at the expense of letting google rifle through your personal stuff. their metrics allow them to track user site visits and stuff, which is interesting in that you can see who sees your site, but you’re also doing a big disservice to your users by allowing google to follow them around. they’re just a creepy, orwellian company who make money from your personal information and other net-metrics.

getting back to signing up for google apps, i don’t know why i did it. the thought of having what i felt was a somewhat reliable infrastructure keeping my mail flowing and my information safe (their apps privacy policy at the time was very strict and decent, all things considered.) i ran into numerous quirks and broken features and google had their instances of downtime that people seem to have absolutely no problem with. at any rate, the price was right, it was $50/year for mail, contacts, calendar access, documents and it’d sync with my pre. this in itself was significant, because it saved me approximately $60/year over my current hosted exchange provider. i purchased my service, waited for it to be provisioned, then moved all my mail over, set mx records, waited a week, then was ready to roll. i had a total of 12 incidents where i couldn’t access my mail for 4-5 hours at a time. a few of those were reported on as they affected their regular gmail services as well as the premier apps service.

for the most part, their service was alright. i hate gmail’s interface. their calendar support is alright, their docs support is actually pretty good. other than the aforementioned downtime, the system was pretty reliable. fast forward to february, this year. last month, i’d been reading some pretty screwy/scary statements made by folks at google that sort of confirmed my opinion of them re: data security/information as a commodity. it made me nervous, but i still had just a few months left until my apps acct would lapse and i could move my domain somewhere else. one night, i was bored at work and read a bunch of stuff that made me wonder about google’s apps privacy policy, so i went to read it. i wish i hadn’t.

i immediately began looking at my options as i only had a few months left on my account and decided that i’d just go back to another exchange provider. i settled on one, set up an account and was ready to go.  except, the new company didn’t process my order. i had to call the following morning, and spoke to someone who finished processing my order for me. thinking that was that, i logged into the control panel, and saw that postini had hung on provisioning and my account wasn’t ready. i called the provider again who explained that the postini provisioning api had stalled because my existing domain had postini service. it didn’t, so i thanked the guy and went to research it a bit. i learned a few really wonderful things about the google apps platform. you can’t have google apps premium and separate postini service. there’s no reason it shouldn’t work aside from google either being too fucking lazy to figure out a way or just flat-out not wanting users to be able to do it.  at any rate, i researched a bit more and found hundreds of threads on google’s forums and on other forums stating that they couldn’t move from premier to free apps without deleting their domain and having mail service downtime because google has no way to migrate between services. i also found out that when you disable service and delete your domain, it takes them 5 days to delete it. well, that’s what they say on their site, but from what i read, it can take 6-8 weeks in some cases, even with constant contact with google support, for them to finally release your domain. only then, can you add additional services or make changes to things. they also make it impossible to change your domain once your account is provisioned. also, they make it impossible to change your username without using their provisioning api. is it really that hard to add a ui element to let users change their address?

after doing some research and submitting a ticket to google to have postini deleted from my account so i could provision my new mail service, i logged in to get my support PIN and noticed i had no mail. zero mail. i checked docs, that too was empty. looked at my calendar. blank as well. well fuck. at this point, i’m livid. i have my mail backed up in preparation for moving to a new host, so it’s not the fact that i lost my mail that made me mad. it’s that there’s no recourse for it. according to their phone system, it’s not an “emergency” because i have less than 10 users.  at this point, i’m so angry i just contact the new host to see if i could get a temporary MX record to just get the fuck off google apps til i can get them to remove my services. of course, since my luck is so awesome, they won’t do it. i started scouring the interbutts for another hosted exchange provider who might give me a temporary MX record and happened upon the message center. they said they had 24/7 support, so i figured i’d give them a shot. i called their support number and spoke to someone who gave me some suggestions for removing postini/apps stuff from my domain and gave me their phone # on file for google support (which isn’t published on google’s site, btw). the dude also told me that their provisioning system would give me a temporary MX to use until i get squared away with the google bullshit. great.

so i got my mail set up, migrated over, changed my MX records and now i’m waiting til tomorrow when i can actually (hopefully) speak to someone at google and get them to remove their broken fucking apps service and other bullshit from my domain so i can get provisioned with postini service and return to ignoring their existence.

google pledges enterprise reliability, but doesn’t actually have 24/7 support, nor do they actually answer email tickets. i found numerous threads where people hadn’t heard from google in 6-8 WEEKS since submitting a ticket, their issue was still unresolved (and in some cases, totally unacceptable) and yet people still continue using their services. i don’t get it. if they treat their paying customers like shit, what do they do for the folks who use their “free” stuff? gross.