Product Reviews

These days it's easy to access your email on the move. There are dozens of free webmail services available, and many mobile phones include a full email client. If your business involves a lot of travelling, though, you'll probably need access to more than just email.

Microsoft's Exchange Server allows you to store and work with contacts, appointments and notes as well as emails, but exchange servers can be too costly for many small businesses. In effect 1and1's Exchange email account allows you to rent an Exchange server for £6 plus VAT per user, per month.

Once you've bought an

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account, you can access your email, contacts and calendar in several ways, wherever you are. The easiest is to log in using a web browser. This gives you a kind of supercharged webmail system, with access to your contacts, notes, files, appointments and email. Alternatively, if you have a Pocket PC that's connected to the internet, you can use ActiveSync to synchronise its data with the server.

You can even use a conventional email client. A copy of Microsoft Outlook 2003 is included with every account, and this version can be connected to the remote server. This process works only on Windows XP, but 1and1 provides a handy data file that sets up your software automatically. When you have finished using Outlook it synchronises your data with the server, so it's always up to date.

The control panel allows you to add more users to your server, so you can use Exchange's collaboration features for jobs such as scheduling meetings. Every account has 1GB of storage, which is significantly more than other, similar services offer. It's too expensive for most home users, but if you work with a few colleagues and need access to your data anywhere, this package could be ideal.