For additional guidance, check out our community articles detailing the process of migrating from your current platform to Carbonio CE.
For enterprise-level requirements and advanced features, consider checking out Zextras Carbonio – the all-in-one private digital workplace designed for digital sovereignty trusted by the public sector, telcos, and regulated industries.
Comparing Zimbra to other mail management systems and digital workplaces is a pretty hot topic, and questions are often asked about it. In the article, ” Is Zimbra better than Gmail? ” we saw a comparison between Zimbra Collaboration Suite and Gmail, while another interesting comparison that is often questioned is the one with Outlook.
Outlook
Microsoft Outlook, defined as “Microsoft’s free personal email and calendar client”, is probably the most well-known and popular application for sending and receiving email. Alongside email management, it can also be leveraged to manage appointments, tasks and other items in calendars, contacts and notes.
Zimbra
It is an open source software, which includes both server and client side components, secure and fast for messaging and collaboration. It allows, therefore, a complete management, not only of email, but also provides a number of additional tools to create a true digital workspace. To know more, you can refer to the following article: “ What is Zimbra?”
Zimbra vs Outlook
As with the article regarding the comparison between Zimbra and Google, it is interesting to compare the different features between Zimbra and Outlook. Specifically, however, also in this case, as already done for Gmail, we’re going to put Outlook in the context of Microsoft 365, going to compare it with Zimbra Collaboration Suite.
Zimbra
Zimbra Collaboration Suite, is presented with a series of different plans depending on the needs of the company, starting from a free Open Source Edition to get to paid versions with price quoted according to the number of user accounts required. It can be installed on both local and cloud servers. In the article “ Why Zimbra could be a benefit to your business“, you can read more about all the Zimbra features, but for a more immediate comparison we list below some of them:
- Calendar Management
- Contact Management
- Content Management
- Real Time Editing
- Real-Time Chat
- Task Management
Zextras Suite
To enhance Zimbra Open Source, and add more functionality, you have the option to choose the Zextras Suite solution. Zextras offers a number of enhancements and additional features to what Zimbra already presents, including a comprehensive backup system, a storage system that allows you to optimize space and performance, an advanced chat and video meeting system even on mobile, a file sharing drive and much more.
You can download and try Zextras Suite for free from the official website.
Outlook
To better compare Outlook with Zimbra, as mentioned earlier, let’s go ahead and analyze Microsoft 365 as a suite. In the Business version, it presents different plans with prices that vary according to the desired features, starting from a Standard plan up to a Premium one. Below we list some of the features with which Microsoft 365 presents itself, remembering that these vary depending on the plan you go to choose:
- Address Book
- Audit Trail
- Brainstorming
- Calendar Management
- Calendar/Reminder System
- Collaboration Tools
- Contact Management
- Discussions / Forums
- Document Generation
- Document Management
- Email Management
- Event Management
- File Sharing
- Multi-User Collaboration
- Notes Management
ADDITIONAL FEATURES
- Office Suite
- Presentation Tools
- Reporting/Analytics
- Room Booking
- Scheduling
- Task Management
- Templates
- Version Control
- Video Conferencing
Which should you choose?
Choosing which one to go for really depends a lot on your needs. For a single user or one with few demands, Outlook may seem the most immediate choice, but the Zimbra client is just as easy to use and has a few more features. At the corporate level, however, the factors to consider are multiple and should be evaluated by comparing the features we have shown you in this article. For sure, the Zimbra OSE + Zextras Suite solution turns out to be the most suitable for most businesses, guaranteeing advantages in terms of economy and performance as well.