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Microsoft

Exchange-Compatible Webmail Alternatives? 55

Posted by Cliff from the if-you-can't-arrange-to-exchange-Exchange dept.
itwerx asks: "A client of mine is wedded to Exchange 2000 for their email server but would like to move away from Outlook Web Access (OWA) for security reasons. There are several possibilities but I'm wondering what experience the Slashdot community has had with these (or other) options."
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Exchange-Compatible Webmail Alternatives? More

Exchange-Compatible Webmail Alternatives?

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  • imp (Score:4, Informative)

    by bob@dB.org ( 89920 ) <bob@db.org> on Sunday February 02, 2003 @08:40AM (#5209636) Homepage
    from http://www.horde.org/imp/ [horde.org]

    IMP is the Internet Messaging Program. It is written in PHP and provides webmail access to IMAP and POP3 accounts.

    • Re:imp (Score:3, Informative)

      by walt-sjc ( 145127 )
      I've been using IMP for quite some time, and many large ISP's also use it. It's actually quite mature, and easy for end-users to learn. A post further down claims that installation is difficult, but I have not found that to be the case - in fact it only took about 20 minutes.

      Note that IMP (email) is only one module [horde.org] of Horde. Adding the modules together and it trumps what MS WebMail offers by quite a bit.

      • Re:imp (Score:3, Informative)

        by Mark Round ( 211258 )
        I'll second the suggestion for IMP - it rules.
        One other thing, though - as PHP doesn't support persistent IMAP connections, you'll find that it can be quite slow in some cases. The Horde project has recently released a Imap Proxy [horde.org], which speeds things up a fair amount, and reduces load on the servers. It works very nicely, and is extremely simple to set up.

        Oh, and I have heard of people having bad experiences using a PHP accelerator with Horde, although I've had it running with no problems here. YMMV, etc....
        • IMP is the only PHP-based IMAP-capable webmail solution that I've used that can handle large (2000+ message) mailboxes gracefully.
          • What about squirrelmail? Can it handle large numbers of messages? Linux Magazine ( http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ ) did a little write-up on squirrelmail in the January 2003 issue. I have installed IMP, which can be found at http://www.horde.org/ and it is very robust. It has several wonderful features. I helped install it for http://pirate.park.edu/, a system which handles over 5000+ emails a day.
    • New Page 1

      Your best bet is OWA in SSL mode on exchange 2000.

      use a client certificate And HiPerExchange [hiperexchange.com] to fortify the speed with an excellent cache engine, and even let you mobilize it on an offline notebook.

      It's like having your own slim and fast web based Exchange server on your machine that goes everywhere you go.

    • Not to be a troll, but do you REALLY believe that? After all, MS has chosen functionality / features over security on a regular basis. If they were TRUELY serious about security issues and providing good value to their customers, they would offer patches for their existing products as opposed to forcing people to buy a new version to get a secure platform. By the way, I'm talking about patching design flaws, not bug fixing.

      MS has not offered security up front. They have been pushed / shamed into it - kicking, screaming, and dragging their feet.

      Microsoft's mission is to make as much money as possible. Their customer's needs and desires are secondary. Note that MS is not alone here. The standard business model of (most) commercial software is to sell upgrades. This is one of the main reasons that Open Source is taking off.
      • If you bought a car before they invented seat belts and airbags and ABS, would you expect to get those features added for free when they were invented?

        And yes, I REALLY believe that M$ is beginning to realize that poor security hurts their bottom line. And that means they will start to do something about it.
        • A car is not software. With software, once a patch is created, it can be replicated billions of times for nothing. There is no "cost per unit". Your analogy fails. Even if we were to use your flawed analogy, cars get recalled all the time for safety defects all repaired at the manufacturers expense. The reality is that manufacturers reserve part of the profit of the car to use in future recalls. It's a standard expense they KNOW they will have. So YES. I expect MS to fix their shit for a reasonable amount of time - say 5 years or so from date of last sale.

          One of the reasons you buy commercial software is for support. Exchange is VERY EXPENSIVE. I expect (and customers should demand) that MS fix all security related issues in all current software without being forced to buy new software. MS has over 40 BILLION in cash. They can more than afford to fix their software, and they OWE their customers to do so.

  • SquirrelMail - Webmail for nuts (Score:5, Informative)

    by geirt ( 55254 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @09:31AM (#5209728)

    We have used SquirrelMail [squirrelmail.org] for som time now, and our users are very happy. Stay with open standards (IMAP/SMTP/LDAP), and you can replace components in a system (eg. Exchange) without changing everything.

    From http://www.squirrelmail.org/ [squirrelmail.org]:

    What is SquirrelMail?

    SquirrelMail is a standards-based webmail package written in PHP4. It includes built-in pure PHP support for the IMAP and SMTP protocols, and all pages render in pure HTML 4.0 (with no Javascript) for maximum compatibility across browsers. It has very few requirements and is very easy to configure and install. SquirrelMail has a all the functionality you would want from an email client, including strong MIME support, address books, and folder manipulation.

    • This is a nice system and I have been using it for some time with much sucess. However I would not suggest trying to use SSL with it if you have clients with IE6, for some reason or another it does seem to barf.
    • I've tried three different webmail solutions (NOCC, IMP, Squirrelmail) on my home machine, as my company firewall blocks everything but proxied HTTP.

      Note: Even after mail filtering, I have some VERY large mailboxes. Many of my mailing list boxes have 1-2k or more messages, my main Inbox has over 6000 messages.

      NOCC - Doesn't even split mailboxes into multiple pages. Utterly useless
      Squirrelmail - Splits mailboxes into multiple pages but still barfs on large mailboxes on 50% of page loads. (To the point that apache must be killed and restarted.)
      IMP - The only IMAP webmail system I've used that doesn't trip and fall flat on its face when dealing with large mailboxes.

      Note: If anyone could point me to a webmail system that:
      a) Uses very lightweight HTML. Preferably 3.2 or lower, for viewing on mobile devices.
      b) Handles large IMAP mailboxes gracefully

      I would really appreciate it. NOCC was the closest to a solution in category a), IMP is the only solution I've found in b) but it can't be viewed from my Kyocera 6035.
      • I don't know what you are talking about. Perhaps you are running mbox which is you problem right there! I have been running squirelmail with Courier-IMAP as the IMAP server and Qmail and the MTA. SM is the easiest to configure and the most standards compliant webmail client which is precisly why I use it. Some of my subfolders have in excess of 30K messages a piece and my Maildir is about 1.2G in size now, steadily growing of course:) My mail server is a K6-233 w/80MB of RAM and I have never had squirrelmail bomb on me. It does run a little slow because of the HW limitations but it has never crashed. I have been using is exclusively for me e-mail now for just under a year. Perhaps your IMAP server is the one that's having troubles. IMP is more fully featured but it also a pain to install/upgrade/maintain too and its not totally standards based.
      • You should have a look at mimp, the Mobile IMP. It is currently only available from the Horde CVS. Never used it so I don't know where they are in the developpement but seem to fit your requirement.

        http://cvs.horde.org/cvs.php/mimp?login=2

  • Make it custom (Score:3, Informative)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @09:39AM (#5209749) Homepage

    I was looking around for a webmail, and all I could find was IMP and squirrelmail. Believe me theyre both not quite mature, although I saw IMP running for years at Plattsburgh State. Installation of either is a ROYAL pain and not standardized, so you have to design your server, OS and other settings for the webmail system. for eg, for Squirrelmail you have to use courier imap and either courier mta or qmail. For IMP, you need certain versions of PHP with certain compile flags plus install HORDE. Last year this was complicated dont know now..

    I made my own webmail for the site Hazara.org and Changezi.info in PHP4. Took maybe a weeks worth part time work and I got it a perfect fit (except for downloading attachments). I tried to make a custom C-compiled CGI-based webmail system for qmail using XML, but had a tough time looking up docs for the c-client libs to be able to read Maildirs directly. Gave up on it after trying to use the IMAP method, still on the lookout for c-client docs now.

    Please post any free solutions you come up with.

    • Re:Make it custom (Score:4, Funny)

      by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson@ps g . com> on Sunday February 02, 2003 @09:51AM (#5209781)
      use perl next time - its only as hard to read and write as you make it.

      all the functions you need to write a webmail app are already coded as modules and all you have to do is tie them together. the code from acmemail can probably be used to help one write a perl-based webmail application: http://www.astray.com/acmemail/

      perl isn't as scary as some people make it out to be. and usually those people don't know perl, so they're talking through their arse.
      • I used Acme for some time, it was quite a nice system as webmail goes. Of course I hate webmail, but Acme was certainly a lot better as a simple mail client than TWIG (though much harder to install). Squirrel and IMP are both alright, except of course for that whole being webmail problem.
    • for Squirrelmail you have to use courier imap and either courier mta or qmail.
      Not true. I'm using SquirrelMail with uw-imap and Postfix, and it works fine. You just have to tell it what IMAP server you're using.

      Actually, the only time I ever had any problems with SquirrelMail was when I was using qmail -- but the problem was with the Debian package, not qmail. It worked fine after I installed the tarball from squirrelmail.org.
      • I use squirrelmail with uw-imap and sendmail. Unfortunately, it does not support SSL connections to the IMAP server. It's also a bit sluggish because it opens a new connection to the IMAP server every time you load a page.
    • Horde isn't as bad as it use to be. I finished helping a friend get it installed and it was much smoother than before. You'll probably want to tbe running the latest distribution. This install went on a RH 8.0 box.

      • I've set up IMP both under Solaris & Debian. Under Solaris, it was a royal PITA as installing horde + IMP isn't that intuitive, plus it puts various options in different files. Upgrades were a nightmare, as I tried to make sure that I didn't over-write any important files.

        Under debian, it was 90% apt-get install imp with a little tweaking afterwards.

        In both cases, it's been solid to work with and I've never had any problems with it after initial configuration.

    • for eg, for Squirrelmail you have to use courier imap and either courier mta or qmail.

      FYI, I have it running fine with Postfix as MTA. Installation was absolutely trivial on Gentoo Linux.

    • I agree that IMP installation is unnecessarily complicated (and so is sqwebmail, a free webmail that comes with courier).

      I installed squirrelmail today inspired by this article and I must say that it was very simple indeed. Your observations about the imap servers required are not correct, the choices are:

      cyrus = Cyrus IMAP server
      uw = University of Washington's IMAP server
      exchange = Microsoft Exchange IMAP server
      courier = Courier IMAP server
      macosx = Mac OS X Mailserver
      other = Not one of the above servers

      I see no real reason why it shouldn't work on others as long as they conform to the IMAP standard.

      Your MTA requirement is obviously incorrect, since here the Squirrelmail choices are:

      1. Sendmail
      2. SMTP

      The sendmail binary is provided by either qmail or sendmail and SMTP is supported by every MTA I ever heard of.

      Custom writing a webmail client sounds like fun but do it for the right reasons...
    • Uh, you can use *ANY* IMAP server with SquirrelMail. In fact, it even comes with presets for Courier, UW-IMAP, Cyrus, and Exchange. It can also be used with *ANY* MTA, so long as the MTA and the IMAP server both use the same storage methods (you can't use mbox format with Courier-IMAP, for instance, so you can't use Sendmail with Courier-IMAP).

      I've got several installations of SM using Sendmail + UW-IMAP, and several with Postfix + Courier-IMAP. Works great. I've used a few that used Sendmail + Cyrus as well.

      .
    • for Squirrelmail you have to use courier imap and either courier mta or qmail.


      This is totally false. I use SM with UW IMAP and Sendmail.

      Why would you say that you have to use courier and/or qmail?

      From the config utilty:


      Each IMAP server has its own quirks. As much as we tried to stick
      to standards, it doesn't help much if the IMAP server doesn't follow
      the same principles. We have made some work-arounds for some of
      these servers. If you would like to use them, please select your
      IMAP server. If you do not wish to use these work-arounds, you can
      set this to "other", and none will be used.
      cyrus = Cyrus IMAP server
      uw = University of Washington's IMAP server
      exchange = Microsoft Exchange IMAP server
      courier = Courier IMAP server
      macosx = Mac OS X Mailserver
      other = Not one of the above servers


      SquirrelMail supports ANY mail server that offers a reasonable approximation of SMTP AND can use the sendmail binary that comes with most MTAs.

      -Peter
    • Stepping away from the subject at hand for a moment. :)
      I use OpenWebMail [openwebmail.org] (used to be NeoMail) at home and it's not bad at all. I have a couple mailboxes with over 4000 messages it's only slow the very first time you open one (it builds an index). It has lots of features (multiple addresses on one account, text search, spell check, calendaring etc.)
      If it talked to Exchange I'd be building a server for it for my client right now. :)
    • Installation of either is a ROYAL pain and not standardized, so you have to design your server, OS and other settings for the webmail system. for eg, for Squirrelmail you have to use courier imap and either courier mta or qmail.

      It's not that bad. I've been running Squirrelmail for over a year on UW IMAP and Postfix. There's now an RPM install, and it's included with the latest versions of Redhat. After you've installed you have to run a Perl script to set which IMAP server you're using (choice of Courrier, UW, Cyrus), what your hostname and site names are, the default themes, where you want to save tmp files, LDAP support etc. Works fine with Sendmail and Qmail too. Not hard. If you want to customise there are a lot of plugins you can use, or write your own.

  • Just about anything will work (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Most web-based mail front-ends use IMAP or POP to access the users' mailboxes. The hardest part will probably getting authentication to work properly. You'll need to pass the credentials back to the IMAP/POP virtual servers, but that should be easy to do, especially with some kind of forms-based logon.


  • What is web mail for? If it is for your own employees, then perhaps VPN for remote access is a more general answer to the question.

    linux oriented solution would be to tunnel the necessary mail ports over an ssh. MS Win* solution would be a VPN client, like Nortel Extranet.
  • I posted this Ask Slashdot.
    My thanks to all the posters, especially the persons who suggested SamsungContact and gave feedback on HiPerExchange.
    Unfortunately the rest of the suggestions (so far) do not support calendar functions!!
    The idea is to replace all of OWA, not just the email portion of it! :)
    • Squirrelmail has a plugin for a calendar. It's not the "group" calendar that OWA/Exchange uses, but for most users it works fine. Note though that it is internal to squirrelmail so if they use Outlook on their desktops and webmail for when they are travelling, they will end up with 2 calendars.

    • IMP does not support calendar per se, but other Horde application does it and integrate pretty seamlessly with IMP. Horde have a decent contact manager (Turba) with LDAP support and a correct calendar (Kronolyth, yes they have funny name). Kronolyth have iCalendar and shared calendar support in CVS (not yet in stable version). There is also note manager, time tracker, etc available at http://www.horde.org/projects.php

  • Let the morons begin (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now the question posed was not well defined, but your going to have a really hard time to find a good alternative to Outlook Web Access, if you also want to privde the same functionality.

    If you want users to be able to set up meetings, check their co workers schedules, send email, look up their contacts etc, and the repsository for this info is Exchange your pretty much stuck, or your going to spend serious time, integrating a lot of different solutions, into something much less slick.

    You might want to look into ways you can lock up outlook with web acccess. First off run it on seperate computers of course from the Exchange server, place the OWAs in the DMZ, prefrably make ppl VPN into them, run Microsofts new proxy server as an added security meassure. Run really good firewalls, you might even want to look into running reverse proxies on a UNIX platform in order to "shield" the MS machines more.

  • SuSE Linux OpenExchange Server (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Joe Tennies ( 564856 ) on Monday February 03, 2003 @02:03AM (#5213621) Homepage
    It's not a free alternative, but it's supposed to be cheaper and can still be used w/ outlook (and therefore should work w/ evolution too). http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/suse_busi ness/openexchange/ I have no affiliation w/ SuSE. I just find this product interesting.
    • It's interesting, but it doesn't appear to support much of the Outlook functionality (we went and checked with the SuSE guys at LWE last month). There's a bunch of things it just doesn't do (or you need to go to an external app. to do it). The typical Outlook-bigot HATES this approach. Samsung Contact does everything through Outlook.
  • You may want to have a look at twiggi [sourceforge.net]. I have used it for over a year, and it has done everything that I wanted plus some. As an added bonus, it even looks a little like Outlook. It needs an IMAP server to run, but as others have suggested, sticking with open standards makes life a lot easier.
  • This project (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/jical) is a start. It enables iCalendar clients like Evolution and Mozilla Calendar to publish their free-busy data in a format accessible by Outlook clients. It uses RFC2445 to ensure compatibility with various other software programs. Regarding a web interface. Some of the samples enable you to render your iCal diary as HTML, XML or PDF. It's not got the read/write capabilities but the rest is mostly there. We're looking at moving to CAP capability next which means any CAP client (including web cal types) can access a calendar store as according to the evolving CAP standard.
  • This project (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/jical) is a start. It enables iCalendar clients like Evolution and Mozilla Calendar to publish their free-busy data in a format accessible by Outlook clients. It uses RFC2445 to ensure compatibility with various other software programs. Regarding a web interface, some of the samples included in JiCal enable you to render your iCal diary as HTML, XML or PDF. It's not got the read/write capabilities but the rest is mostly there. We're looking at moving to CAP capability next which means any CAP client (including web cal types) can access a calendar store as according to the evolving CAP standard.

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