Zoho Partner · Egypt
Zoho, licensed and actually managed.
We have been a Zoho partner for over three years. Clients buy their Zoho Workplace and Mail licensing through us and we run the platform for them: provisioning, storage, domains and support.
What we do on Zoho
Licensing
Zoho Workplace and Mail subscriptions, renewals, mid-term seat additions and storage add-ons. Handled on a prorated basis so you are not paying for a full year on a user who joined in month nine.
Migration
Moving mail and domains onto Zoho from whatever is there now, including multi-domain estates, without losing history.
Managed operation
User provisioning and de-provisioning, storage management, domain and DNS records, and a support line that answers.
A migration we are proud of
One of our long-standing clients, a multi-company group in Egypt. Moved to Zoho on our recommendation and has stayed on it since. We do not publish client names, but the shape of the project is worth describing because it is the kind of work Zoho is genuinely good for.
| Dimension | Detail |
|---|
| Scale | A 200+ mailbox Zoho Workplace estate with tiered storage. Standard mailboxes plus additional high-capacity allocations for the users who needed them. |
| Scope | Every one of the group’s domains migrated off the previous email service and onto Zoho. Not a partial move, and not one domain at a time over a year. |
| Since | Multi-year. Renewals, seat add-ons and storage expansions have run continuously through Stark since the migration. |
| Why it worked | Right-sized licensing. Rather than one plan for everybody, mailboxes were matched to what each user actually needed, which is where the saving on a platform like Zoho comes from. |
Client names and commercial details are withheld under confidentiality. References can be provided directly, on request, with the client’s agreement.
What we actually configure in a Zoho tenancy
Buying Zoho licensing is a transaction. Running a mail platform that delivers reliably, cannot be taken over with a stolen password, and can answer a legal request two years later is the work. Most of the tenancies we inherit were set up by whoever was available on the day, and are missing the same handful of controls.
Deliverability, the part that decides whether your mail arrives
SPFA single, correct SPF record listing every legitimate sender: Zoho, the CRM, the invoicing system, the marketing tool, the website contact form. Two SPF records on a domain is an instant failure, and multiple lookups silently break it once you pass the limit.
DKIMSigning enabled and the key published, for every domain and subdomain that sends. Unsigned mail from a real business domain is exactly what a receiving filter is trained to distrust.
DMARC, moved forward deliberatelyPublished in monitoring mode first, the reports actually read for a few weeks to find the legitimate senders nobody remembered, and only then tightened to quarantine and reject. Publishing an enforcing policy on day one is how a company stops its own invoices from arriving.
MX, autodiscover and reverse DNSRecords correct, TTLs lowered before a cutover and restored afterwards, and old records from the previous provider removed rather than left in place “just in case”.
Reputation monitoringBlocklist checks and bounce patterns watched after go-live. A new sending domain is not trusted automatically, and a compromised account will burn that reputation in a morning.
Securing the tenancy
Multi-factor enforced, not offeredTwo-factor mandatory for administrators first and then for everybody, with recovery codes recorded properly. Business email compromise almost never involves breaking anything. It involves one reused password.
Least-privilege administrationNamed super-administrators kept to a minimum, delegated roles for the routine work, and a documented answer to “who can read anyone’s mail”, because someone can.
Session and device controlActive sessions visible, remote sign-out available, and application-specific passwords used where a legacy client cannot do modern authentication instead of weakening the whole account.
Spam, phishing and outbound controlInbound policy tuned to the business, attachment and content rules set, and outbound limits configured so a compromised mailbox cannot quietly send fifty thousand messages under your domain.
Joiners and leaversA defined process: mailbox handed over or delegated, forwarding set for a defined period, licence reclaimed, sessions terminated. Leavers whose mailboxes stay live and unwatched are a standing risk and a standing cost.
Retention, records and getting mail out again
Retention policySet against what the business actually has to keep, per department where that differs. Indefinite retention for everyone is a cost; ninety days for everyone is a liability.
eDiscovery and legal holdThe ability to search across mailboxes and preserve a set of messages against deletion, configured and tested before the day somebody asks for it under time pressure.
Export and exitYour mail exportable in a standard format, on demand. We set this up on the way in, because a platform you cannot leave is a platform that can price you however it likes.
Backup is still your jobA cloud mail platform protects the service, not you from yourself. Deleted, encrypted or maliciously purged mail has a limited recovery window. Where the business needs longer, we add a separate backup.
The migration itself. What goes wrong and how we avoid it
| Stage | What we do | The failure it prevents |
|---|
| Discovery | Full inventory of mailboxes, aliases, shared accounts, distribution groups, forwarders and every domain and subdomain in use. | The alias nobody mentioned that turns out to be where all the supplier invoices arrive. |
| Pre-seed | Historic mail copied across before cutover, while the old system is still live and users are unaffected. | A weekend outage while years of mail crawl over the link. |
| Cutover | MX changed at a planned time with TTLs already lowered, both systems accepting mail during propagation. | Messages bouncing or landing in the old system for a day and a half. |
| Delta sync | Everything that arrived during the switch copied over afterwards. | The gap in the mailbox that somebody notices three weeks later. |
| Client and mobile | Desktop, phone and shared-folder reconfiguration handled per user, with signatures and calendars checked. | The week of support calls that makes staff say the migration failed. |
| Decommission | Old service kept read-only for an agreed period, then closed properly and its DNS cleaned up. | Paying two providers for a year, and stale records that break deliverability later. |
Multi-domain estates are migrated as one programme, not one domain at a time over a year.
Beyond mail
WorkDriveTeam folders structured around how the business is organised, with external sharing controlled and link expiry set. Rather than everything in personal drives that leave when the person does.
Right-sized storageStandard allocations for most users and high-capacity allocations for the few who genuinely need them. This is where the saving on Zoho actually comes from, and it is the thing most resellers do not bother to do.
Prorated licensing that tracks the headcountSeats added mid-term on a prorated basis and reclaimed when people leave, so you are not paying a full year for a joiner who arrived in month nine or a leaver who went in month three.
Where we draw the line. Zoho is genuinely cheaper for the right user mix, and genuinely the wrong answer for some estates. Deep Microsoft identity, Teams or SharePoint dependencies usually settle it. We sell and run both, so the comparison we give you is arithmetic on your real headcount, not a preference. Sometimes the honest answer is to stay where you are.
Zoho or Microsoft 365?
We sell and manage both, so we have no reason to push you either way. In practice the decision usually comes down to three questions:
Do you need desktop Office?If your finance and engineering people live in installed Excel, that pulls toward Microsoft 365. If most of your staff need reliable business email and web documents, Zoho does that for materially less.
How mixed is your user base?Large estates with a wide spread of user types are usually where Zoho’s cheaper mail tiers save the most. Most staff on light mail plans, heavy users licensed properly.
What else has to integrate?Existing Microsoft identity, Teams or SharePoint dependencies push toward Microsoft 365. A clean slate opens the choice back up.
We will give you the honest comparison for your actual headcount before you commit. Including the case where the answer is “stay where you are”.
Tell us your headcount and where mail lives now
We will price Zoho against Microsoft 365 for your real user mix, and tell you which one costs less to run over three years.
Book the free assessment02 35375791
