Evaluating Open Sourced Web E-mail Projects?

malahoo asks: "I've recently registered my own domain name for personal fun and education, and am trying to find interesting things to do with it and my Linux box. High on this list is setting up a Web-based e-mail site, like YahooMail or Hotmail, for my family and friends to use. What open source projects out there would be suitable for this? On freshmeat, I've found such projects as WebMail, PHPWebMail, acmemail, etc. But I haven't found a way to evaluate these programs based on features, stability, security, and other factors. Have any of my fellow members of the Slashdot community set up a Web mail site? What tools did you use, how did you decide on these tools, and what is your experience & reccomendations for someone following the same path?"

Comments

IMHO

[Pathwalker]

I really like the IMHO webmail system.
I use it both at work, and on my home system.
The install is a snap, configuration is easy, and it has a lot of nice features (spellchecker, LDAP directories, etc).

The only real thing that I think some people might see as a disadvantage is that you have to be running Roxen to use it
(I see this as an advantage, but I really like Roxen).
--

Check the HTTP Mail User Agent Inventory & twig

[draziw]

Why not check out http://www.cru.fr/http-mail/. It is the "HTTP Mail User Agent inventory". It's a little old, but it still lists a lot of programs.

twig looks best to me.

Have you seen TWIG?

[Erisian]

I've been using TWIG for a while now. It's all PHP and just about the closest thing to a Yahoo! clone out there right now.

It has Mail, Contacts (with a realistic amount of info that can be supplied), schedule, todo, notes and bookmarks. It uses only plain HTML so it can be used on any browser, no java or javascript needed.

It seems to work with just about any IMAP backend (I'm still using a NT based IMAP package on a different machine that was left from the previous admin.)

As an aside... As long as the packages your interested in aren't tied to different backends, there isn't any reason to not install several and play with them all until you find The One True(tm) mail package for you.

Just My View

IMP and Horde

[Brazilian Geek]

Someone already mentioned IMP and Horde but didn't mention why they used it so I'll give my 2 cents.

The IMP suite emulates the look and feel of most of the webmail sites out there - the login page is simple, the pages are simple and elegant - the one thing I miss though is a trash can but that doesn't bother anyone around here.

My users are pains in the arse when it comes to ease of use - just as a side note, in 80 computers there are 4 types of email clients in use other than my webmail system - access through IMP is used by 20 users (ranking number 2 after Netscape Mail). So far the only complaint I've heard from them is that I mangle file attachments (nothing to do with IMP but they blame it anyway) - a number much lower than the 5 complaints a day for Netscape Mail.

Something else I like about IMP is that it's incredibly easy to setup. Untar, rename directories, cp old config, restart apache (optional) a wham-o. BTW, they've had a recent run with some nasty exploits - it would be wise to get the most recent version if you intend on using it.

Oh, it has POP3 and IMAP support (I firewall my IMAP ports except for the tunnel I have between the webmail server and my mail server so it doesn't hurt security too much). Something that's VERY useful for me is that it's already multilingual!