Sorry to hear about your Small...

Don;t want spam traps to block my post but you might think this is going down a path we don't want to visit.

Well let's say we keep it clean and above board, for the minute.

Following another excellent post by Duffbert I found a gem to discuss in this article from Computer World.

Google gives you a 25GB mail file when you pay the $50/yr for their GAPE product as discussed previously.

Microsoft in their new found Cloud of Azure claims:

There are limitations in Exchange Online. Mailboxes default to just 1GB. Every additional gigabyte costs $2 per gigabyte per month. The maximum size is 4GB, despite the service being built with Exchange 2007, which supports mailboxes up to 16GB.

The 4GB limit is "to ensure the best performance in Outlook," said Betz. "Customers we talk to tell us that overly large inboxes create many problems for their organizations," which have to comply with rules around compliance and e-mail discovery.

Duffbert quoted this part too, but my interest is in the 2nd paragraph, overly large inboxes create problems? You don't say? So the answer is to limit the users to 4GB to prevent their inbox from getting too big?

HUH?!

Domino also doesn't like very large inboxes but that never stops you from having a 10gb file or larger, although your antivirus will not be happy with you nor will your autoindexing function as they slow down to a crawl but traffic in Manhattan has been the same for decades too.

Don't you think better mail filtering or even end user training could help?
No, just quota them to death, no wait charge them for it too. Google doesn't seem to have this problem....or do they?

By the way, Microsoft charges you for this benefit $15/month but I guess with the extra 3 GB that would add an additional $6 so $21 a month over the year is $252.
$202 MORE than Google is and you get what in return?

I know someone reading this is saying, yes but IBM just did the same thing. Well yes and no, IBM is billing the usage at $8/month, still more than Google no question but you get to keep your Notes apps and mail. At $46 more per user that's not funny either and the real question, if you are an SMB is what is more important to you, cost savings, reliability, long term leadership or ease and efficiency.