Re: [PLUG] open source webmail reviews?

[Morgan Jones <morgan@morganjones.org>]

Randall et al,

I'll share the experiences I've had.  Until recently I used Cyrus, Postfix and SA on a CentOS vm.  I was without webmail for a few years during which time I tried several products.  I used cyrus sieve filtering to sort SPAM which worked but it was painful to update the filters.  I've recently converted to Zimbra.

I do have a Zimbra bias as I do Zimbra integration for a living and so know it well and like it.

RoundCube: doesn't handle large inboxes well at all at least with a Cyrus backend.  Large in my case is 1500-5000 messages.  It's been a year or so since I tried it but development didn't seem very active the last time I checked.

Horde: We had a major problem separating identities: I share my server with a few friends and each time we'd configure it to send from a different address mail for other users would come from that address.  This may well be user error.  The interface was good but not great.

Zimbra is not a webmail client but an integrated collaboration solution--webmail, calendaring, mta, imap and pop server, etc.. The do use a lot of open source components but they wrap their own configuration utilities and admin interface around them which I find particularly frustrating for products I know well.  Postfix, SA, OpenLDAP, etc. are all there but can't be configured in the usual way. 

If you're willing to use Zimbra for your mta, webmail, client, imap server, etc. you get an awesome integrated experience.  The downside it is is resource intensive and you really have to drink the Zimbra cool-aid and do things their way.    Documentation can be spotty but almost everything you want to do is either in their forums or on a blog somewhere.  

The free version doesn't have an official backup solution but an rsync of the filesystem combined with a mysql dump will work fine.  You could also imapsync the data to a secondary server.  

You don't get ActiveSync with the free version but imap and caldav work very well from your favorite imap client and iCal and the iPhone.  My gf and I share calendars this way.  

CardDAV works but has some gotchas at least in 6.0.x.

I'll happily share my experiences getting Zimbra working on a resource limited VM if you do go this direction. 

There is a learning curve and it takes some buy-in but the free Zimbra product works very well.

-morgan





On Mar 14, 2011, at 1:01 PM, Randall A Sindlinger wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> Wikipedia has a list of web-based email clients 
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e-mail_clients#web-based)
> 
>    * 24SevenOffice
>    * Alpine
>    * Bongo
>    * Citadel
>    * Horde IMP
>    * Hula project
>    * Kerio WebMail
>    * OpenGroupware Webmail
>    * RoundCube Webmail
>    * SquirrelMail
>    * WebPine
>    * Zimbra
> 
> However, I was hoping to find a page comparing them, like
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_providers
> but for the actual webmail apps.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-mail_clients
> is sadly lacking, mentioning only Citadel, RoundCube, and 
> SquirrelMail (and RoundCube only is in the first table).
> 
> I'm primarily interested in comparing Horde/IMP to RoundCube.
> 
> The information I'm most interested it would be like
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-mail_clients#Database.2C_folders_and_customization
> 
> Does anyone know of a good resource, set of reviews, or care to 
> lobby for one of the platforms?
> 
> Thanks!
> -Randall
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