Question 1

What is a Microsoft 365 alternative?

Accepted Answer

Any other route to hosting and running your company mail. That covers rival platforms such as Google Workspace, Zoho Mail, Fastmail and Proton, and it covers managed services like this one, where somebody else carries the licence and holds the administrator account instead of handing you a console and a documentation library.

Question 2

How is Cascadia different from Microsoft 365?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft sells you a licence to a platform you then administer yourself. We sell the administration. The subscription is ours to carry, the migration ours to run, the DNS and authentication ours to keep aligned, and your staff phone us rather than a colleague. We deliver that on Google Workspace and Zoho Mail. We do not manage Microsoft 365 today, so if you are staying on Microsoft this page is a comparison rather than a proposal.

Question 3

How does your price compare to theirs?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft 365 Business Basic is seven dollars per user per month on an annual subscription. Our management fee is five dollars per user per month on Zoho Mail and ten on Google Workspace, with the platform licence carried on our account and billed alongside it. So we cost more per seat, and the difference is a person who owns the console. If somebody on your team already does that work well, our price makes no sense and you should back your own arithmetic.

Question 4

Is Microsoft 365 cheaper than this?

Accepted Answer

Per seat, yes, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Seven dollars for Business Basic buys a great deal of capable software. What it does not buy is anybody to run it. Our price should be measured against the hours somebody in your business currently loses to mail administration, or against the salary you would pay to make it their actual job, rather than against a licence line.

Question 5

What is not included in a Microsoft 365 plan?

Accepted Answer

The administration, chiefly. Beyond that, the price shown is an annual commitment quoted per month and it renews on its own date, Microsoft 365 Apps for business is a separate product from the mail plans, and Copilot is bundled only on the tiers that name it. Microsoft publishes all of it clearly. It is simply not what somebody comparing seat prices usually reads.

Question 6

How does your billing differ from theirs?

Accepted Answer

Microsoft bills a licence on an annual term that renews on its own date, and the seat count is whatever the console last said it was. We bill monthly for the seats you actually have, licence and management together on one invoice, with no term and no renewal date for anybody here to forget. When somebody leaves, you tell us and the next invoice is smaller.

Question 7

Should we move off Microsoft 365 at all?

Accepted Answer

Often not, and we would rather say so early than at the third meeting. If your business runs on Excel, Teams and SharePoint, stay where you are. The move makes sense when mail is genuinely the only thing you use Microsoft for, when the Office applications are already being replaced by something else, or when nobody has owned the tenant for a year and the licence count has drifted well past your payroll.

Question 8

Can you move us off Microsoft 365 without losing anything?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Mail, contacts and calendars all come across, and nobody's address changes, because addresses belong to your domain rather than to Microsoft. We build and verify the new mailboxes while your current tenant keeps running, then cut the DNS over at a time that suits you. Anything living in SharePoint, Teams or OneDrive needs a decision rather than a migration, so raise that early.

Question 9

Will anybody lose mail during the move?

Accepted Answer

No. We copy first and cut the DNS over second, so mail keeps flowing throughout and nothing is deleted from the old tenant until you say so. There is a short window where a message can still land in the old mailbox after the copy finishes, which is why we run a final sweep after cutover rather than calling it done at the switch.

Question 10

What if nobody here knows the administrator password?

Accepted Answer

That is a common starting point and it is recoverable. Microsoft has a documented process for proving control of a tenant through the domain, and we run that with you. If it fails, the domain itself is still yours and mail can be rebuilt on it. Either way it adds time rather than making the move impossible. Tell us at the start rather than on the migration weekend.

Question 11

Does this replace Microsoft 365 or sit alongside it?

Accepted Answer

For mail it replaces it. Companies keeping Microsoft for Office and Teams sometimes ask whether we can run just the mailboxes and leave the rest, and the answer today is no, because managing Microsoft 365 sits outside this service. If you want a split, the sensible one is Microsoft for the applications and your mail somewhere it can be owned properly, and we will map that out rather than sell around it.

Question 12

Can we keep our existing email addresses?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and in almost every case you should. Addresses belong to your domain rather than to your provider, so changing where the mail lives does not change anybody's address, signature or history. The exception is a company still using an address that ends in a web host's own domain, and that is worth fixing on the way through rather than carrying forward.

Question 13

Who owns the mailboxes and the data?

Accepted Answer

You do. The domain is yours, the mailboxes are yours, and everything inside them is yours. Ask for a full export whenever you like and it comes back the same week, in a standard format, at no charge. If you leave, we hand over the administrator credentials rather than making you rebuild from nothing.

Question 14

Who sets up SPF, DKIM and DMARC?

Accepted Answer

We do, on every domain your company sends from, and we align them so the whole chain can be verified. Then we read the DMARC reports, which is the step nearly everyone skips and the one that tells you what is actually sending as you. Once the reports are clean we move the policy from monitoring to enforcement.

Question 15

How long does a migration take, and what breaks?

Accepted Answer

Most moves finish inside three weeks of the first conversation, and under fifty mailboxes usually cuts over across a single weekend. What breaks, reliably, is whatever nobody mentioned: the scanner that emails PDFs, the website form, the billing system with a password from 2019. We ask for that list up front and we still find two more.

Question 16

What if I want to leave?

Accepted Answer

Thirty days notice ends it and everything is portable. The DNS records sat on your own domain throughout because they were always yours. Mailboxes, contacts and calendars stay exactly where they are, and we hand you the administrator credentials rather than making anybody rebuild. If the right answer for you turns out to be buying Microsoft 365 direct, we will say that too.

A Microsoft 365 Alternative For Companies With Nobody To Run It

Nothing is broken and nobody here can add a user

The price is quoted monthly and the commitment is annual

Microsoft supports the tenant. Somebody still has to administer it

Cascadia

Without Cascadia

Somebody holds the administrator console, and it is not you

SPF, DKIM and DMARC rechecked whenever your DNS changes

New staff have working mail on their first morning

Leavers lose access the day they go, not at renewal

Seat count matched to the people you actually employ

Licence and labour on one invoice from one company

Mailbox migration included rather than quoted as a project

DMARC reports actually read, not merely switched on

Your staff contact us directly with no ticket allowance

Nobody on your side needs a login, a password or a spare hour

Where Microsoft 365 fits

Where Cascadia is the better buy

Where Microsoft 365 is strong

Where we are the stronger buy

Moving your company mailboxes onto a managed account in four steps

We audit what you have before changing anything

We build the mailboxes and align the authentication

Mail, contacts and calendars are copied across

The DNS cuts over and your staff have our number

Don't Take Our Word For It

The person who set it up left, and nobody replaced the password

The seat count went up and never came back down

Dollars per user each month to manage

Setup fee, and no user minimum

Weeks from first conversation to cutover

Microsoft 365 alternative and managed business email FAQs

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