webmail - host that has one

[danspath]

What I'd really like to find is a host that offers webmail that is worth noticing. I'd like my address to be myemail@mydomain but I have to be able to access it via the web. So far everything I've seen is pretty weak stuff that I would makes Yahoo mail look good.

[Jaiem]

Welcome!

You can set Hotmail (and Yahoo I think) to receive email from a POP3 account but can't reply.

Try a service like Webbox.com or POP3NOW.com (or something like that). You can configure those to receive and send email from your POP3 via the web.

[allera]

We use SquirrelMail as our webmailer. Works great. Has all the same features as hotmail, except you don't reply with a hotmail address :) While browsing around for a host, see if they will give you a test run of their webmailer before you commit to them.


Note: This isn't an ad so don't bust my chops :)

[Phoenix]

Allera,

We've been looking for an upgrade to our current webmail client as we are finding that a number of our clients are using it as their default mail client because it is easy to use and doesn't require configuring like Outlook, etc.

We've been looking at Javascript webmail apps, but Squirrelmail looks ideal-and the fact that it is open source and PHP4 makes it a better fit for us.

I just passed the info along to the techies. If this turns out to be our new webmail client, the beers are on me.

[allera]

Phoenix: I couldn't say enough about squirrelmail. It's got plugins, it's fully customizable (provided you know some html and php), it's very fast, and it's IMAP. Just the plugin feature alone won me over. Best of all, it's free. :D

Also, I try to stay away from javascript. Squirrelmail itself is javascript-free. There are some plugins that rely on javascript, but either I didn't install them, or they were minor enough that I didn't care if a few people couldn't access them.

Let me know how it goes!

For those of you interested in taking a look at it, you can find it at www.squirrelmail.org.

[Phoenix]

Better than free, it's open source, woo hoo! We've got a PHP developer on staff who does pretty neat stuff with PHP and MySQL (mostly for his own amusement) and is a big believer in open source. So, if he likes it, he'll probably muck around with it a bit, beyond just customizing it.

[Technics]

Hi,

My current host http://www.kdawebservices.com uses neomail with there control panel and i have to say its very good, does everything i need it to for a webbased mail system.

[Phoenix]

Hmmm...Neomail might be worth having the techs look at as well. I sure like their tagline:

Neomail
All your webmail are belong to us

[danspath]

Neomail is ok, but the developer is somewhat uninterested in support/developing it (according to his site) so I am staying away from it.

Guess I'm old, but when it comes to my email...any company motto that includes the word "suck" concerns me.

[Phoenix]

the developer is somewhat uninterested in support/developing it (according to his site) so I am staying away from it.

I took a look over his site and he sounds like a lot of geeks I know. He's developed something, made it open source, you can use it if you want it, make changes, whatever, but he's found something else to be interested in, so he's not going to support it or work further on it.


Guess I'm old, but when it comes to my email...any company motto that includes the word "suck" concerns me.

I'm not exactly young, myself, but I was one of the first Beavis and Butthead fans, and whenever I see something that says it doesn't suck, I know exactly what they mean: it rules!

[James]

Originally posted by allera
Phoenix: I couldn't say enough about squirrelmail. It's got plugins, it's fully customizable (provided you know some html and php), it's very fast, and it's IMAP. Just the plugin feature alone won me over. Best of all, it's free.

Allera,

Does squirrelmail allow you to send and receive from a pop 3 account?

[Jaiem]

Webbox does.

[allera]

Originally posted by James Cross


Allera,

Does squirrelmail allow you to send and receive from a pop 3 account?

Sure.. it treats the POP account as an IMAP account while you are in SquirrelMail, though. But ANY POP account on the system is accessible via SquirrelMail (via IMAP) and can both send and receive mail.

If you are talking about a POP account not related to the system (I have @focalhosting.com and I have another email address from my ISP @bellsouth.net), I can POP my @bellsouth.net account as well (just like you can in Hotmail).

Drop me a line if you wish to give it a test run. I have a demo set up for some others who wanted to check it out. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't, but it's great in my opinion.

allera@focalhosting.com

[danspath]

I took a look at squirel main (thanks focal hosting for the demo) and thought it was very impressive. Strongest one I've seen yet.

[James]

I've seen a few demos but the only system i can find to date that does what i want is pop3now.com

I need a system that allows me to send as james.cross@webhostdir.com , not just let people reply to me at that address.

Sorry if that doesnt make much sense, difficult to get down in writing :)

[allera]

SquirrelMail, out of the box I believe, lets you set your own email address. You can also specify a totally different Reply-To email address. Hotmail does not allow you to specify your own address. It automatically uses <username>@hotmail.com and lets you use a reply-to in case you want people to reply to a diff email account.

SquirrelMail allows you to send as any email address you want. Even bubbleman@popme.com. It's all defined in the user's SquirrelMail settings.

I hope that made sense... :)

[James]

Thanks,

You explained it much more clearly than me ;)

It seems to offer the solution, whats the catch? Why's it a free release?

[allera]

Why is Linux free? Why are Free, Net, and OpenBSD free? :)

I find open-source software is the most stable, bug-free software available, for obvious reasons.

Take a look at www.freshmeat.net and www.sourceforge.net for more free stuff. There are _amazing_ software packages out there that are 100% free.

I find that a lot of programmers release their software for free to allow others to further develop the software. 100 programmers and ideas are much better than 1 or 5, in my opinion.

There are no catches to SquirrelMail that I have found. They have the software available to download at www.squirrelmail.org and they encourage its use.

[James]

Originally posted by allera
Why is Linux free? Why are Free, Net, and OpenBSD free? :)


Point taken! I was just suprised that they dont even charge a nominal fee. $5 per year....

I've seen a lot of talk about 128 bit encryption, whats Squirrelmail security like?

[allera]

I suppose any webmail is as secure as the site it sits on. Email by nature is very insecure.

As far as password storage and transmission, squirrelmail uses a neat PHP method of securing your password while communicating with it. After it verifies your password with the mail server, it'll make you a custom password and use that to authenticate you when using the webmailer for that session. It's all transparent to the user.

As far as I can see, from the squirrelmail site and the code itself, the webmailer is very secure, which is one of the reasons why I chose it. If you know anything about PHP, take a look at the source and how the webmailer works. It's quite complex, but tight.

[Phoenix]

Originally posted by allera
Why is Linux free? Why are Free, Net, and OpenBSD free? :)

I find open-source software is the most stable, bug-free software available, for obvious reasons.

Take a look at www.freshmeat.net and www.sourceforge.net for more free stuff. There are _amazing_ software packages out there that are 100% free.



Open-source developers are just different from developers who are doing it for the money. Open-source developers tend to be much better programmers, and often are doing it to either fill a need or because it is something that they were told couldn't be done.

Bragging rights are also important to them.

They also (for some reason) see no monetary value in anything they create. One of the people here is an open-source advocate and developer, and he knows that what he's built is useful, but can't see anyone paying to use it.

He's so far built us a web-based billing system (to fill a need) a web-based photoarchive system that pulls images from a mailing lists and automatically puts them in a database, categorizing them as well (bragging rights and something he needs). He also built a web-based trading application for Diablo II characters and items, that could have been licensed to a number of other gaming companies as well (bragging rights and to fill a need). Now, he's working on a web-based reservation system for a local tourist railroad that runs a dinner train, and he's doing that on the side, so he's not going to get much for doing that (bragging rights, he's also a railfan). We also have a proprietary version of Linux that he built (doesn't everyone have their own version of Linux).

He thinks that none of this stuff has any value, would at the most offer them up as open-source. The problem with open-source is that then, anyone who takes the source code and modifies it can legally sell it as their own product, without having to pay the original developer a cent-RedHat Linux is one such.

That's the part of open-source I don't like. Anyone can take squirrelmail, make a few changes to it, put it on a CD and sell it, making them a tidy profit as they didn't have to spend any time developing it.

[allera]

Originally posted by Phoenix


The problem with open-source is that then, anyone who takes the source code and modifies it can legally sell it as their own product, without having to pay the original developer a cent-RedHat Linux is one such.

That's the part of open-source I don't like. Anyone can take squirrelmail, make a few changes to it, put it on a CD and sell it, making them a tidy profit as they didn't have to spend any time developing it.

Very well said. Don't the licenses that these programs are released under protect against that in some way?

[Phoenix]

Originally posted by allera


Very well said. Don't the licenses that these programs are released under protect against that in some way?

Nope, that's what open-source means. No licensing, no nothing. 'Here, take this source code, and do whatever you want with it'. It's like inventing something and not patenting it, letting anyone who wants to build one and sell it and make the money.

My grandfather was an open-source inventor. He invented and built a safer ship's ladder that would automatically adjust itself as the ship raised and lowered in the water as the amount of cargo/ballast changed-a lot of accidents and deaths happened prior to this. He gave the design to the company he worked for, never patented it. Not only is that ladder still in use on their ships, but it was copied and adopted by many other shipping lines, as well as the navy.

His wife nearly killed him, that ladder could have made them a goodly amount of cash, but he thought it was wrong to make money from a safety device.