I have been using Squirrelmail since the late 1990s and while it works and is dependable - the interface is still stuck in the 1990s. A year or so ago I looked at another webmail project: RoundCube Webmail but it was quire ready for primetime. The developers just released a new version which looks promising. If you are in need of a webmail solution - give it a shot.

I have been a long time SquirrelMail web mail user (Since 1998). I have always relied on it when I needed to check my email if I was away from home or the office. Last month, I decided to dump SquirrelMail for RoundCube Webmail I was sick of the SquirrelMail interface and tired of waiting for the next release. After a few days with RoundCube Webmail - I have decided to go back to SquirrelMail because of it’s reliability and functionality. Although RoundCube Webmail is beautiful, it does not support rules (filters) or much of anything else - your mail is just “there”. SquirrelMail has all kinds of plugins to add in functionality and I have grown to appreciate it. Anyways - if you are thinking about installing a web mail package - I would recommend sticking with SquirrelMail - at least for now. I installed the latest development version (1.5.1) and have noticed that it is a lot peppier than the stable release and I have not had any problems so far. Now to make it prettier…

I had another busy weekend this past weekend and one of my many tasks was to download and try RoundCube webmail (PHP, MySQL, XHTML, CSS). I have been using Squirrelmail since early 1999 but was intrigued my Alex King's post on RoundCube webmail a few weeks ago. The install was painless and I had everything up and running in a matter of minutes. The user interface is gorgeous (something that I cannot say about Squirrelmail), but since it is still in an early beta release, there is not too many fancy features like filtering, plugins, etc. I decided not to replace Squirrelmail just yet, but I have the install up and ready to go to test further so I can send back some helpful feedback to the developers. If you have simple webmail needs and you want to use an amazing UI, check this package out!
[tags]roundcube webmail, squirrelmail[/tags]

I have been using open source solutions for over seven years now. (my first open source experience was with mailman and then ht://dig and squirrelmail soon after - all of which I still use today) I made it a priority to get involved with at least one open source project this year, and to start out I have chosen to get involved with WordPress. I signed up to help with browser testing and to look at ways WordPress can offer more CMS features. I have extensive browser testing experience and have plenty of CMS and WordPress as a CMS experience that I look forward helping with the WordPress project and giving something back to a great community. If you would also like to help, check out the WordPress Development page.
[tags]mailman, ht://dig, squirrelmail, CMS, WordPress, open source[/tags]