what's a good webmail server?

[DeeJay-Mo]

My father's university is upgrading their existing, Novell based webmail system and is asking for suggestions for a new one. Can anyone suggest a decent Linux based webmail system? It would have to handle all the pop3 and smtp side of things as well as the gui.

 

[Whiskas]

Squirrelmail or Horde are the 2 most common webmail servers under Linux.

Although TBH if your dad is in a position to make these sorts of decisions on behalf of an organisation like a university surely he's capable of researching and evaluating products himself?

 

[QuantumXP]

TBH if your dad is in a position to make these sorts of decisions on behalf of an organisation like a university surely he's capable of researching and evaluating products himself?

Having had to research many things in the past my first step is usually to ask around first. Just asking for a few opinions can enable you to spend your research time focused on the areas that are most applicable to the problem.

I've never setup a webmail server so unfortunately cannot advise on that particular point.

 

[Adz]

Check out Roundcube and Atmail (not free) .

 

[bigredshark]

Having had to research many things in the past my first step is usually to ask around first. Just asking for a few opinions can enable you to spend your research time focused on the areas that are most applicable to the problem.

I've never setup a webmail server so unfortunately cannot advise on that particular point.

If somebody who is in the position to make these kind of decisions for a university is asking for opinion on an internet forum then I'm horrified.

Advice - hire a specialist consultant now.

 

[MikeTimbers]

Sun Java Enterprise System Messaging Server. I run a set of three on relatively cheap Sun servers and it can handle enormous numbers of mail accounts and is used by 60% of ISPs in the US. It's even free unless you want support from Sun. It's a beast to setup but my day rate is quite reasonable

 

[Whiskas]

If somebody who is in the position to make these kind of decisions for a university is asking for opinion on an internet forum then I'm horrified.

Advice - hire a specialist consultant now.

Phew! Im glad someone agrees with my (admittedly conservative with a small "c") viewpoint on this subject.

 

[bigredshark]

Phew! Im glad someone agrees with my (admittedly conservative with a small "c") viewpoint on this subject.

Speaking as a senior Bioinf/sysadmong at a University I would expect such a decision to go to various levels of tender and meeting with consultation from internal and external experts. However to cut to the chase we went with Horde IMP for the web frontend. We also recently moved from a UWIMAP backend to a Courier backend with little in the way of problems. With sufficient clustering/reduncancy we've had little in the way of system downtime except in cases where it was inevitable (such as city-wide power outages). I'd recommend Squirrelmail for SMEs/ smallish organisations where you want to get something solid and straightforward up and running quickly, and Horde if you want more configurability and functionality. At the end of the day though it all depends on how your mail backend is set up, and migrating that to a new system is probably going to be more of a headache than migrating to a brand new web front-end for your mail service.

EDIT: P.S. I would class migrating form pop3 to imap/*spit*exchange*spit* to be more of a priority than your web front-end. For DPA/ IP/ convenience having mailboxes centrally stored is far more agreeable than direct pop3 downloads

Interesting, I don't know much about what uni's use, only that a few places use exchange with OWA. Which I kinda like the idea of as it's going to be same as students will likely use in the workplace when they graduate.

I haven't actually dealt with this much. My largest exchange setup was 2500 users and that was a few years ago. I did our relay servers at work (I chose exim - as fast as sendmail and more administrator friendly) but nothing pop3 or front end as we don't give users email address (we're a business ISP) and just provide a relay service.

 

[DRZ]

Have you had a look at Scalix?

Its not free if you want support but its pretty good