Re: webmail

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 11:09:44PM +0200, Russell Coker wrote:
> What's a good webmail system to use?

courier's sqwebmail is not too bad.  reasonably fast, quite
configurable.

it goes direct to each user's Maildir/ spool.  this could be good or it
could be bad, depending on your setup.

i don't think it has an IMAP or POP option, but i could be wrong on
that.


worth a look, anyway.  it's packaged for debian.

> There are several in Debian, I've had experience with IMP, but that
> experience has been mostly painful.  Upgrading it is always difficult,

the thing that pissed me off with IMP was that it was so fragile.
upgrading it could break it.  upgrading php or apache could break it.
upgrading something (seemingly) unrelated could break it.  just thinking
about upgrading something on a different machine could break it.  it was
a major hassle keeping the damn thing running just for the handful of
staff members who insisted that they needed it.

> and the packages insist on Postgresql even though it's not needed at
> all unless you have a cluster.

imp stores user prefs, address books, etc in postgres (or mysql).

> 
> How do the other webmail systems compare?

i've used IMP and sqwebmail, looked briefly at several others.  so far,
i prefer sqwebmail.  

truth is, i don't like any of them, they all suck (but that's partly
because i think that a web application is an inherently crappy way of
accessing email)...so my "preference" for sqwebmail is from the POV of
someone who dislikes web mail apps but was required to set one up.

sqwebmail is minimal hassle to set up and keep running, and does the job
about as well as it's possible to do (i.e. badly rather than abysmally).


> Calendaring support which integrates with Outlook would be a bonus,
> but apart from that I just need basic functionality.

it has some sort of optional calendar feature.  no idea how good it is,
or whether it works with outlook or not.  i think it's just a web
groupware calendar thing.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
 -- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch


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