Recommendation for a good web mail server??

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michelito

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
85
Hello,

I've been tasked at looking at a solution to provide web-based email to some of our on the road employees, and I have to admit I don't have a clue as to what is available currently.

I found things like SquirrelMail, BlueMamba and RoundCube, but don't know which ones are reliable and have the best feature sets.

Basic requirements are:
  • low cost: open source preferable, however a low-cost purchasing fee would be acceptable
  • mail must be accessible through a standard web browser
  • should provide a choice of french or english client interface, determined by each user
  • ideally, should be able to integrate with Active Directory
  • should be able to apply corporate look & feel : colors, logo
  • should be able to integrate with some sort of anti-spam solution
That's about all of what I was told... :)
I would really appreciate any recommendations / suggestions of mail servers to look at.

Thanks!
 
Well wouldn't this really depend on what your company is currently using for email...
 
I'd agree with Google for web based. They have the ultimate in spam filtering and it's free/cheap depending on the number of users. The only thing it doesn't fill in your list is the integration with Active Directory.

Roundcube is a nice solution with a really good look and feel to it. If you have a server you can dedicate to it then I wouldn't hesitate to use it, if you are trying to host it in a shared environment, it gets real slow real quick.

SquirrelMail, despite being one of the most popular ones out there, is the most hideous piles of crap. It is functional, but it's quite cumbersome.

Other options, ilohamail. Small, light, versatile and been around a while. I haven't used it in quite some time so I don't know where it's at in it's development life cycle. Horde is another very popular one. It works great but can get cumbersome with very large mailboxes. I've never used (or heard of) BlueMamba.
 
Complicated - we are using Outlook, but this solution would be for users that access email a couple of times a week only. Problem with Outlook is the cost of the user license for these very light users (there are close to 3000 of them, with a CAL fee of $80 / user...).

We thought about using Google, but the per user fee is something like $50/user per year (I was told), which is even worse than the Outlook license.

So that is why I was asked to look at a *very cheap* solution... even though this is not really my domain of usual responsibility... any thoughts?
 
I'm confused... Are you looking to replace the entire Mail system, or just a cheaper front end?
 
We're looking at providing an entire mail system for a portion of our users that make very light use of email and for which spending $80 / user for an Outlook license is not economically sound (there are around 3000 of these light users).

Hope that makes sense - it's been a long night... :)
 
Thank you supergper and xeon for the hints - I'll take a look this morning at zimbra and roundcube for starters. ilohamail development seems stopped since 2005, so I'll keep it for last.
 
I used to use RoundCube for a front end to a postfix system but I've since switched everything over to Zimbra. Be warned though that it's not kind to your server resources. You're going to need a LOT of hardware to cover 3000 users.
 
I was Squirrelmail on all my Postfix email servers and it is hands down my favorite. Very low bandwidth so travel users can still get their email based on their connection speed and is very lite on server load. I highly recommend Squirrelmail!
 
litkaj said:
I used to use RoundCube for a front end to a postfix system but I've since switched everything over to Zimbra. Be warned though that it's not kind to your server resources. You're going to need a LOT of hardware to cover 3000 users.
Click to expand...
That's an understatement! :D

If you choose Zimbra, be prepared to pay more for the hardware than you would for the licensing for Exchange. I had a brand new quad core server with 8GBs of memory with a Raid 5 (5 drives) with SCSI disks and with ~50 users it would make that system crawl. I would/will never use Zimbra again. For 3000 users you are talking about a decent sized server farm with NAS/SAN, etc.
 
* low cost: open source preferable, however a low-cost purchasing fee would be acceptable

open source sounds nice, but in such a big company (3000 users), compatibility is important, you don't want to hire consultants to make sure other software will work together with it. Maybe you don't get this question right now from your people, but believe me...one day it will come.​

* mail must be accessible through a standard web browser

To be honest, OWA is still the most supported web-based company front-end.
It will work together with mobile devices like the nokia E-series, iphones and windows mobile devices.​

* should provide a choice of french or english client interface, determined by each user

OWA depends on the language of the user browser, it changes it language automatically.
Maybe I sound a bit like a microsoft guru, but afterall their software is the most used to make opensource tools for! (try to find opensource tools for opensource software?..)​

* ideally, should be able to integrate with Active Directory

Don't have to explain this I think, microsoft exchange depends on AD..​

* should be able to apply corporate look & feel : colors, logo

Signatures, outlook environment..​

* should be able to integrate with some sort of anti-spam solution

Intelligent message filtering, trend micro scan mail, GFI mail essentials,..
TIP: http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Server_Based_Antispam_Comparison.html​

Like I just said, I don't want to sound like an pro-microsoft user, but if you're a company with that many users, you can't just walk away from microsoft.

Opensource software is nice for small companies that have a little amout of users, but with 3000 users you will have to spend more money on user education, implementation, own personal training, compatibility programming,.. when your choice goes for open source.
 
I don't have an suggestion for what to use, but I can suggest that you DON'T use Zimbra. We made that mistake and have had nothing but problems.
 
Novell Groupwise is sweet. Well test in large environments such as Colleges and Universities.

I love the web access and GroupWise client as well.

Really good software.
 
supergper said:
That's an understatement! :D

If you choose Zimbra, be prepared to pay more for the hardware than you would for the licensing for Exchange. I had a brand new quad core server with 8GBs of memory with a Raid 5 (5 drives) with SCSI disks and with ~50 users it would make that system crawl. I would/will never use Zimbra again. For 3000 users you are talking about a decent sized server farm with NAS/SAN, etc.
Click to expand...

Alright, it's not that bad. If you're throwing that much hardware at it and the "system crawls" then your system isn't setup very well.

Try running through this document:
http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=Performance_Tuning_Guidelines_for_Large_Deployments

My install has about 75 users with just over 300 accounts. About 20% are using the Zimbra webmail, 10% are using IMAP, and the rest POP3. The system is divided into CentOS 4 VPSs using OpenVZ and all have unrestricted access to resources. The HN is a Xeon 3060 (dual-core, 2.4GHz) with 2GB of RAM and a pair of SATA drives in RAID 1 and even with the other apps running (a couple vBulletin sites) it doesn't break a load average of 0.5 (and most of that is iowait from the SATA disks).
 
try hmail
i am going to run a test environment with that to see how it works.
 
michelito said:
Problem with Outlook is the cost of the user license for these very light users (there are close to 3000 of them, with a CAL fee of $80 / user...).
Click to expand...
Unless I'm mistaken, that's based of concurrent usage. If you've only got them looking at it twice a week for brief periods, I wouldn't expect there to ever be more than a couple hundred on at once??

TriXje said:
Exactly.


And what I don't understand... A company with 3,000 users (and those are just the minor-use ones) should have the cash to do what is required. Exchange is simply the best thing out there.


Also, you've got to maintain compatibility.
Spend more money now: save money converting everything over later, or lots of time trying to get it to work the way you need it to.
Click to expand...
 
Don't get me wrong: I fully agree that the best solution is just to get everyone in Outlook and be done with it instead of starting to fiddle with 2 different mail systems and trying to integrate with AD while routing users on the same mail domain to different systems and resolving address book issues...
It's just that when the CIO asks you to look at alternative solutions, you have to do a bit of research :). Love this place there are so many people with an amazing range of experience!

Thanks everyone for all the good advice - we'll be off to explain to the CIO that things aren't as easy and economical as she seems to think they are :p
 
TriXje said:
* low cost: open source preferable, however a low-cost purchasing fee would be acceptable

open source sounds nice, but in such a big company (3000 users), compatibility is important, you don't want to hire consultants to make sure other software will work together with it. Maybe you don't get this question right now from your people, but believe me...one day it will come.​

* mail must be accessible through a standard web browser

To be honest, OWA is still the most supported web-based company front-end.
It will work together with mobile devices like the nokia E-series, iphones and windows mobile devices.​

* should provide a choice of french or english client interface, determined by each user

OWA depends on the language of the user browser, it changes it language automatically.
Maybe I sound a bit like a microsoft guru, but afterall their software is the most used to make opensource tools for! (try to find opensource tools for opensource software?..)​

* ideally, should be able to integrate with Active Directory

Don't have to explain this I think, microsoft exchange depends on AD..​

* should be able to apply corporate look & feel : colors, logo

Signatures, outlook environment..​

* should be able to integrate with some sort of anti-spam solution

Intelligent message filtering, trend micro scan mail, GFI mail essentials,..
TIP: http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Server_Based_Antispam_Comparison.html​

Like I just said, I don't want to sound like an pro-microsoft user, but if you're a company with that many users, you can't just walk away from microsoft.

Opensource software is nice for small companies that have a little amout of users, but with 3000 users you will have to spend more money on user education, implementation, own personal training, compatibility programming,.. when your choice goes for open source.
Click to expand...

Bump +1. You have quite a few users and Exchange / Outlook would make a good fit. The freebie things may work but people aren't used to it and training could be cumbersome for your support staff. Also, you need to think about the type of information will be flowing using a open source solution. Do you want a 3rd party to store/send your confidential information, sales contracts, and whatever else you may have. Do any of the communications need to be encrypted?
 
michelito said:
Don't get me wrong: I fully agree that the best solution is just to get everyone in Outlook and be done with it instead of starting to fiddle with 2 different mail systems and trying to integrate with AD while routing users on the same mail domain to different systems and resolving address book issues...
It's just that when the CIO asks you to look at alternative solutions, you have to do a bit of research :). Love this place there are so many people with an amazing range of experience!

Thanks everyone for all the good advice - we'll be off to explain to the CIO that things aren't as easy and economical as she seems to think they are :p
Click to expand...

TopBrass are always looking for ways to save some money for the company and don't realize that some of the the alternative solutions just don't freaking work that will for 1000's of users. Then, they can report to Finance guys and say they did consider alternatives and the (outlook / exchange) option is the most copatible and easist to use for the current environment. In the end, some of the research is a big waste of time.
 
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