New Webmail Interface

[dwykofka]

I am losing customers due to the simple fact that the cpanel webmail offerings are not up to par with the services out there. I am sure many of us are in the same boat and I have opened this thread so that we can attempt to come up with a solution and present it to cpanel..



My Input:
MailBee, they have a developer edition that allows for royalty free distribution at only $500.00. I didn't read through the whole license but I think it might be suitable.

Live Demo:
http://www.afterlogic.com/webmail-pro-net/

Pricing:
http://www.afterlogic.com/purchase/webmail-pro.asp

[LBJ]

Originally Posted by dwykofka

I am losing customers due to the simple fact that the cpanel webmail offerings are not up to par

Originally Posted by dwykofka

I am sure many of us are in the same boat

I could very well be wrong, but I wouldn't have thought that was really the case for many firms.

We only run the standard CPanel webmail offerings on all our public hosting servers, and our client retention rate has always been excellent. Our clients appear to place a lot more importance on other factors as opposed to the webmail interface.

I'm aware there are nicer webmail interfaces around, and we run a few on our private servers, but the existing CPanel options are quite respectable too.

Is the webmail interface really an issue for most other companies?

[dwykofka]

One of the markets that we cater to includes customers that use our services primarily for webmail. Most of them run small business and can't justify an exchange server but they dont really need a website either.

[Curious Too]

I rarely receive complaints regarding webmail. The majority of customers who use it are satisfied with either Horde or Squirrel Mail.

[gammahelixx]

I don't receive complaints either, Horde is pretty powerful, and Squirremail is simple enough to use on the road, which is what most people use webmail for.

Besides, MailBee seems to be ASP/.NET, so that would leave Linux out.

[LBJ]

Originally Posted by gammahelixx

I don't receive complaints either, Horde is pretty powerful, and Squirremail is simple enough to use on the road, which is what most people use webmail for.

That's what I would have suspected.

Originally Posted by gammahelixx

Besides, MailBee seems to be ASP/.NET, so that would leave Linux out.

It also runs under php, but it's definitely not a speed demon.

[dwykofka]

I am suprised to see that people dont have complaints.. Most of my enterprise customers have complained, other people are redirecting mail to Google Apps.

[Infopro]

I don't get any complaints but I personally can not stand horde. The one linked above is nice. Too expensive but nice. Round Cube http://www.roundcube.net/screens is very nice as well. cPanel even has hooks setup for this one I believe.

If there was one to push it would be Round Cube. I don't use it, but would, if cPanel brought it into the system.

What I do get is questions on Horde like, "I deleted some mail but its still there" "Why do I have to pick my language every time" "Sometimes login fails" "The icons across the top of the page are a mess" "Do you have any good themes we can use, these preinstalled Horde themes are crap" and so on.

Horde reminds me of Win95. Its time for some more options, imho.

[dwykofka]

yeah I get that feeling from squirrel mail and horde.

I think round cube is good but I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket..

[verdon]

I've had a couple clients switch mail to google apps and I don't mind that at all. There's no way I'm going to offer them that amount of storage, and in one case, I'm talking 80-90 mail accounts. I don't mind the mail load being taken off

Other than that, I've had no complaints on horde.

[dwykofka]

the problem is that email service is something that we are supposed to be providing our clients with and if they are going to google for email because they find our substandard what happens when google decides to offer webhosting for FREE as long as they include adwords on their site?

[HaveHost]

99% of my clients are on Macs and demanded an interface that was as close to Apple's own .Mac and RoundCube seems to have fit the bill. I completely agree that the offerings of cPanel are awful and hardly keeping with the "look" that people are expecting. I found that if it looks bad, people hated it. If it looks modern, they liked it! Fickle? Sure! This is what they've come to know in the "real" world so why would it not extend, logically, to the cyber-world.

cPanel should really be on the ball with this. Webmail is becoming more and more important to businesses that send out people to travel and their offerings in this regard leave a lot to be desired.

James

[RickG]

Originally Posted by dwykofka

MailBee, they have a developer edition <snip>

Have you looked at the SquirrelMail skins available from at www.nutsmail.com? Other than the UI, the feature set of MailBee looks pretty simple which a good template should take care of.

I too have never lost customers due to a webmail interface. On the same note, I often upsell customers to a hosted Exchange account using either www.intermedia.net or www.mailstreet.com if their requirements are beyond what I can handle. Its easy to set up private-labeled reseller accounts on either of these services and its been a great alternative when needed.

[dwykofka]

nutsmail still looks very cartoonish to me.

p.s. their shopping cart is down.

[electric]

There is a free outlook skin for squirrelmail here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/scree...383&ssid=47764

I have not used it, but it does look nice. Maybe someone could test it out and see if that's better then the default "ugly" skin for squirrelmail?