WebMail: Final Thoughts?

[trip]

I recently started hosting with someone who uses CPanel so I could set up a nice webmail client for my family. I want to keep things simple for them and only introduce them to ONE webmail client which is functional enough that they don't have to learn something like Outlook Express.

At first, I thought NeoMail would be enough, but now I realize, like most of you do, that it just can't cut it anymore. So I started looking for alternatives to access POP3 and concluded that UbeiMiau stinks, for starters. I have also heard directly from my host that OpenWebMail, which was tested with cpanel, was such a disaster that it was pulled out (yet I can still access it).

So now my POP3 alternatives seem to be Popper, Postaci, or IMP Mail (can it work with just POP3 alone?).

HOWEVER, now that I hear my host is finally going to test a CPanel version above build 50 (that supports IMAP), I am not sure which direction I should pursue. Wait and go for something like SquirrelMail or IMP Mail from Horde?

What do you guys ultimately think will happen? (And how is this IMAP support thing coming for people anyways?)

A bit confused and hopeful for some good advice,

Trip

 

[ecoutez]

Hurrah for IMAP

I just did some preliminary testing with JawMail (which my users have become addicted to on my non-CPanel servers - see http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/jawmail/ ) and so far its looking very good!

- Primary account works fine
- Sub accounts work fine (in either the [email protected] form or username%domain.com -- failed for me using username+domain.com)
- Verified that both master and virtual accounts can create/modify/delete folders

Note that it may be possible for the master account to view the contents of virtual accounts. If you configure the IMAP web-based client to use a prefix such as 'jawmail' then the master account will have any new folders created in /home/username/mail/jawmail/ while virtual accounts will have new folders in /home/username/mail/virtusername/jawmail/ and that would seperate them for the most part. Personally I don't think it's too big a deal if the master account can view the sub account mail, particularly since the master account has full control over the virtual accounts to begin with. If you're okay with this too, just use a null prefix. It's probably simpler that way anyway. In this case, folders will be created in /home/username/mail/foldername and /home/username/mail/virtusername/foldername

One other thought - if I don't segregate the IMAP-based webmail folders, then the master account wouldn't be able to create a folder with the same name as any of the virtual accounts.

JawMail is an awesome product but there are several good web-based IMAP programs out there (Squirrel Mail, IMP, etc). In that my users are used this this interface, and so far it really seems to work seamlessly, I'm going to add it on my CPanel servers and see how it goes. *fingers crossed*

- Jason