Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/146073
Reviews For Your Firm HOSTING PROVIDERS Xcentric Read the full review and see expanded ratings for this product online at: www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10986959 • Te Xcentric Cloud service uses the port line 24 hours a day, 365 days a BEST FIRM FIT year, and emergency support for Professional tax & accounting frms who Citrix hosting technology, which mission-critical applications is prowish to outsource their IT infrastructure works well w ith a w ide range of hardware devices, including scanners, vided outside of the company's stanand desktop hosting functions to a spedard business hours (weekdays, cialized national provider which serves printers, and mobile devices. This approach allows them to replace the 8A-6P ET). tax and accounting professionals exclucentralized IT server infrastructure sively. in a firm and host the applications POTENTIAL LIMITATIONS from their highly redundant public • Te company's primary data center in STRENGTHS the Southeastern US, and while this • Xcentric has experience hosting and hosting facility. may be attractive to firms in the supporting all of the major CPA frm • Xcentric's website has a resources page with a number of white papers Southeast, it may represent a drawapplication suites used by mid-sized and templates for accounting firms back to f irms in the Northwest. CPA f ir ms, including T homson considering a move to a hosting proXcentric does not offer a hosting Reuters, Intuit, and CCH, a Wolters vider. product which they will certify as Kluwer business. • Company personnel answer the supHIPAA compliant at this time. Cloudvara per day, 365 days a year from personnel technologies like Windows Server in the US and New Delhi, India. 2008 R 2, Microsoft HyperV, and • Cloudvara is a relatively small hosting Citrix Xen. company, and focuses on providing • At approximately $37 per month (plus customized solutions and personalthe cost of licensing), the company's ized service to its customers. The single application hosting is afordable company's website indicates that they for those who want to host a small will host "any application which may number of applications. be required to support a customer's operations". POTENTIAL LIMITATIONS • Servers are hosted in a major provid- • Cloudvara is not a member of the er's central US data center designed Authorized Commercial Hosting for high availability (Tier IV). The Program for QuickBooks. STRENGTHS hosting product utilizes standard Technical support is available 24 hours options to frms with an IT departBEST FIT ment who would like the personalized Organizations looking for basic QuickBooks or multi-user Sage 50 hosting at service not available with cloud giants like Rackspace and Amazon. an atractive price, or those who need hosted virtual servers. Also, frms with • The company offers the free Open an IT department who need expertise in Office productivity suite for those some, but not all, areas of hosting data who need a simple, inexpensive tool for editing documents, spreadsheets, online and would like an outside technical resource to serve as a backup to the and presentations, and also refers customers to Microsof Ofce 365 for in-house IT department. Exchange and SharePoint hosting needs. STRENGTHS • A t $29.95 per u ser, per mont h • Te company is smaller than some of the large hosting providers such as (including QuickBooks Pro), Qutera's base offering is the least expensive Cloud 9 Real Time, Right Networks, Xcentric, and InsynQ , and is designed c om me rc i a l Q u ic k B o ok s ho s t to ofer a range of higher level hosting reviewed here. Qutera also offers Microsof Ofce 365 to customers for services to frms with a front line IT professional. The organization also hosted Exchange and hosted Shareprovides low cost hosting, with hosted Point services. QuickBooks Pro at $29.95/month • Qutera offers a wide range of dediincluding a rented product license. cated virtual server cloud hosting SUMMARY & PRICING Since Xcentric is focused on custom hosting exclusively, the company prices its Xcentric Cloud services on an individualized basis. 678-297-0066 www.xcentric.com Read the full review and see expanded ratings for this product online at: www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10986957 BEST FIT Organizations who need to host a small number of non-standard applications in a high availability environment for access in multiple locations. Also, small to mid-sized frms (1-50 users) and small businesses who wish to host all of their applications on a cloud server. The company considers itself a "boutique" hosting firm that understands clients' needs. Qutera • Xcentric is focused on using its U.S.based personnel to provide the server prov isioning , maintenance, and hosting for professional accounting firms. The company does not offer retail hosting of single applications such as QuickBooks. SUMMARY & PRICING Cloudvara ofers a number of hosting plans, beginning with a Starter plan (1 user, 1 application, 3 GB storage) for $37 per month, and go up to a Corporate plan (10 users, 4 applications, 30 GB storage) for $349 per month. Additional applications can be added to all accounts except the Starter account for $10 per month per application, and extra users can be added for bet ween $34 and $37 depending on the plan selected. 855-601-2821 www.Cloudvara.com Read the full review and see expanded ratings for this product online at: www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10986953 POTENTIAL LIMITATIONS • Qutera has a single data center (in the SouthEast USA, more than 150 miles inland) with signifcant redundancy within the Tier 2+ facility, but a catastrophic failure in their facility could dest roy bot h t he or ig i na l s a nd backups of all data and applications. • Te c ompany's data centers are based in the Southeastern US, and while this may be attractive to firms in the Southeast, it may represent a drawback to frms in the Northwest. • The organization does not provide off-site backups for hosted data, although customer directed backup options are available using technolog ies l i ke WebDAV or back up of applications installed on a dedicated virtual server. SUMMARY & PRICING Qutera is the low price leader in QuickBooks hosting, and offers hosting of QuickBooks Pro, along with a rented license and all Intuit fees for $29.95 per user, per month. Te c ompany will also host QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions for the same price if the user provides their own licenses to these products. Sage 50 US Edition hosting is priced starting at $175 per month for a dedicated virtual server confgured to host fve named users in Sage 50. Custom server hosting is available, with prices based on the amount of computing resources ordered by the client. More information on virtual server pricing is available on the company's website. 800-969-9524 www.qutera.com August 2013 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com 7