[H-GEN] web based email systems

Robert Brockway robert at timetraveller.org
Sun May 16 15:39:20 EDT 2004


On Sun, 16 May 2004, R&J Stuart wrote:

> I'm interested in hearing what people use for web based email.  Some
> examples I have come across are:
> - openwebmail
> - Horde Imp
> - Squirrelmail

I've been running a webmail system on Squirrelmail for a number of years,
mainly for family.  The users have been happy with the system.

I picked Squirrelmail over the myriad of alternatives for several reasons:

1.  At the time it was among the most mature

2.  The choice (about 20 at the time) was almost overwhelming.  I did not
    have time to install and test even the most mature among them.

3.  It was among the most popular.

It does seem to have become the flagship of free webmail systems.  When
this question was posed on Sage-Au (within the last year) the percentage
of people who reported they ran their webmail systems on Squirrelmail was
much larger than any of the others.  This could be a form of
self-fulfilling prophecy of course, where people use it because other
people use it, causing people to use it more.

Overall I'm very happy with it as are the users and I have no plans to
change.  The plugin system is nice too.

> My preferences are for this are (in no particular order):
> - must be able talk IMAP, POP3 is nice

Standard for any mature webmail tool.

> - nice if it could do filtering (spam, but not essential)

I prefer server-side filtering.  I use SpamAssassin for this.

I don't like the idea of tying filtering to the client as it increases the
management when people use different client software.  People on my system
generally use the webmail or pine.

> - prefer IMAP as the mail repositry

Realy covered above.

> - must be able to view headers / raw email

Yep.  I just clicked "view Full Header" in my test user account and got a
very readable list of headers.

> - must be able to deal with attachments (including sending of)

Again, any mature tool should be able to do this.

> - must be able to deal with separate folders

Dtto.

> - reasonably intuitive layout

I think it is.

> Are there any other features I should be looking for?

PGP/GPG.  Make sure it supports this.

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org, rbrockway at uqconnect.net
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah




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