Small Business Considering MacOS Server

As has been mentioned, most of macOS Server.app is due to be deprecated soon. Including web, mail and calendars.

Have a look at Office365, or at Google Docs or other hosted services. Or other folks that offer this service for individual subscriptions, such as FastMail. And of course there are surveys...

Cloud-services related packages such as ownCloud and other self-hosted or vendor-hosted alternatives have been discussed before, too. (If you search the forums for references to OwnCloud, you'll find some postings by various folks including by me.)

It's also sometimes possible to use some NAS devices for this and related purposes, such as the Synology NAS servers and the various optional and sometimes extra-cost plug-ins available for those.

If you run this server software yourself, you're going to want to — you're going to need to — budget the time and effort necessary to configure and maintain and secure and update the services, even with something that was as relatively easy to run as was macOS with Server.app installed. This on an on-going basis. And to patch quickly, when critical patches are released. And owning the details of running a server including running a mail server and dealing with arriving spam and sometimes with compromised clients or servers sending out spam is an ongoing and seldom-entertaining project.

Opening up incoming remote network access means you're opening up your network storage and potentially your local network to remote and malicious activity. Newly-open network ports and services are very quickly found; often within minutes of connection or configuration, in recent years. This can mean you'll want to partition your network, and any breaches of non-isolated local servers may well be extended beyond the local server into whatever that server can access; see what's called a DMZ network configuration for details on that.

Or in a somewhat different manner of consideration, do you want to become or want to acquire or hire and fund your own IT staff? Because that's what this decision involves, if you do decide to self-host. If you outsource that hosting, you'll (usually) have somebody else to call when there's a problem.

Prepare for changes to macOS Server:

Prepare for changes to macOS Server - Apple Support

tonydutt,

I run a small business that has become dependent upon its IT infrastructure. We have been doing most of what you are debating for more than 20 years including web hosting, email hosting, database hosting, computer control via MDM (currently), network userhomes, DNS, and other smaller services. I find that Mr. Hoffman's points are all important but his last point may be your most important one to consider. Do you want to be dealing with failures and rebuilds at 2 am and then have to move on to your "real" job when the office opens again? Or do you want to call someone else to handle it at potentially significant expense? I have been working with Macs since the original was released and most of my skills are based on experience rather than training. I am fairly efficient now, but transitions like this one have brought significant challenges due to learning new systems, methods, and features. Despite the negative connotations in my statements thus far, I totally control all aspects of our network and systems which is a tremendous benefit to our business.

I have some time on my side with regard to Apple's server transition because all of this is already in place for us and we can continue on and just not upgrade to new versions until I get new gear or replacements in place. My current plan is to move to Synology NAS systems with a couple of paid add on features and end our "hot desk" methodology (because Apple's server systems no longer support it satisfactorily) and change to staff needing to carry their own laptops rather than using captive desktops.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

-Erich