Slashdot Mirror
Which Webmail Service Do You Use?
worm eater asks: "I've been hosting my email with my web site host for some time, although a while back I used commercial services such as Yahoo! and Hotmail. I liked Yahoo!, but was disappointed to hear that they stopped offering free POP3 access. So I'm looking for a good, free webmail host for a friend of mine that supports POP3 -- because sometimes you don't want to have to deal with a web interface, no matter how well designed. And it's nice to be able to store messages indefinitely. What do you recommend?" This was last asked two years ago, but webmail is more prevalent now than it was then, so maybe better options are available. Readers interested in security with their webmail might find this discussion interesting, as well.
With free software out there, it is cake to run a home IMAP or POP3 server and have your own webmail configured exactly how you want. Nothing to it.
I host my own email server on a dsl line. Currently I use phpgroupware for webmail access but its development has gone kind of stagnant lately. What other packages do people use? I'm upgrading the server OS and thought I might check out a few alternatives. I know I can do a freshmeat search but I want to know what is active and popular.
In Republican America phones tap you.
I've been using a .Mac address for a while now and I really like it. In addition to the webmail client, my address book and bookmarks are all available to me online thanks to iSync.
Works better than I expected, honestly.
It's nice to be able to store messages indefinitely.
.01% of their bandwidth and system resources to a friend. And unlike many of the services that I know will be mentioned here, that address will actually survive.
If you want to store messages indefinitely, or want a permanent e-mail address, don't rely on free services. When choosing a provider, ask why they will be around in 5 years. Yahoo will be around because they are drawing traffic to their larger site, and selling upgrades. Microsoft will be around because they are trying to leverage control of every aspect of computing to their advantage, and hotmail helps tie people to their passport system. But i-name? deathsdoor.com? Free mail boxes and forwarding services have folded rapidly as small hosting companies have realized that it takes a lot of bandwidth and effort to keep that extra box with 100,000K users up and running, especially with the things people use free mail accounts for (spam boxes and to side-step site registration restrictions).
If you really need a permanent e-mail box, or a permanent e-mail address, consider purchasing one. POBox.com has been around for several years, and charges roughly 15 dollars per year for mail forwarding for life that, unlike many of the other sites out there, might actually be in business that long.
If you are lothe to purchase a permanent address, get friendly with your local college administrator, ISP owner, or Colo guy at bigcompany.com. Most people who own a domain name have no problem giving out
The ______ Agenda
Exactly. Every time I check out the plugins page I spot some new one that is cool enough to merit installing. Virtually every 'itch' you could have while using squirrelmail in terms of features/functionallity has been 'scratched' by a plugin already.
I don't really mind double posts on
If you run your own mail server, I'd recommend installing SquirrelMail. All you basically need is an imap connection to the server that hosts the email, and your web server has to be able to run PHP scripts.
I know it has a funny name, but SquirrelMail is free, open sourced, and fairly easy to install. And it should do everything that you need it to do. (it may not have *all* the bells and whistles, but it gets the job done) And so long as you're running it on your mail server, you can firewall out imap to everyone but localhost.
I use this for my home server since I host my own email too. I use it for those rare times when I can't get an SSH connection to the server so that I can use pine instead. Oh, and the college that I work for went with using this for our web-based email that we use here for the students. While there may be better ones out there, the word "free" was very attractive, plus it did what we needed it to. So we host 4000+ email accounts with using this to access them. (though we changed the logos and graphics and things like that. It's fairly customizeable as well.) I'd say it was worth your time to check it out.
-Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!