Webmail Recommendations

[Mark Johnston]

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 10:19 -0600, Matt Ruzicka wrote:
> Unfortunately we are looking for something with a reasonably slick
> interface (SquirrelMail is maybe lacking in this department a bit), as
> well as a solid backend.  As we all know people only care if they notice
> the backend causes them problems, but almost everyone seems to care how
> something looks.

After much deliberation and poking at different webmail systems, we
shelled out for the @Mail (http://www.atmail.com) webmail component -
about $800 IIRC, which buys you the full source.  It's all perl and runs
under mod_perl, so it goes really fast.  We run it mainly with IMAP, but
some customers are using it for off-site POP3 servers, which it seems to
handle well too.  I haven't needed tech support, so I can't judge that.
As far as the interface, it's very slick-looking; under IE it puts up a
simulation of MS Outlook, and in Firefox and other browsers it has a
nice-looking lightweight feel.  They have an online demo linked from
their site, and a downloadable (obfuscated source) demo as well.

Caveats: the interface is pretty static - if you want to make changes to
it, you can expect to invest some significant time in that.  Also, we
haven't put it under serious load yet, so I can't be sure about hardware
requirements.

Horde was my second choice, and I do actually run it on a personal
server.  It's pretty tricky to get going, and the interface is less
polished, but it's served its purpose well for me.

HTH,
Mark