squirrelmail sucks

I had squirrelmail a few years ago and I see that it has not improved. Don't know if it is slow or my server is slow (not dedicated). Anyway, I created and email account, accessed it, read new emails and then 20 minutes after all of this I can no longer log in! This may have just cost me serious money because I created specifically for business purposes and the timing could not have been worse.

Can't we use a different email server or whatever you call it? I heard that roundcube is infinitely better, but is it even possible to use it with dreamhost?

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do a search in the forum and you will find many threads on this, and how to get roundcube and other webmail systems to work on dreamhost.

Roundcube is only alpha, it doesn't do more than a few things that make it useful as a real client (like you can't download attachements yet, or forward them). I've installed and use it occasionally on dreamhost, but I'm really waiting for a better version before switching to it.

Squirrelmail does work, although it has issues with very large amounts of email in your in folder, I've used it for work and home for years and its fine.

Your issue may just have been transient, or perhaps your spam responses got to big for your inbox :)

If I'm right, isn't squirrelmail just a client? Couldn't you use any pop3/imap client you wanted and just setup accounts via the control panel? Sorry if I'm wrong, that's just how I thought it worked.

Well, the forum search isn't the best. Most of the results for "webmail" are not related to squirrelmail alternatives. Searching for "squirrlemail" returns similar results, but nothing substantial (at least in the last three months.) One mention of round cube and that's it.

Would you mind giving us some names of other apps?

In reply to:
If I'm right, isn't squirrelmail just a client?

Yeah, it's a web-based client though. So it can't really be compared to Outlook Express, for example.

Back when Hotmail was a semi-decent service (going back years now, and even then it had problems =p), I used to make use of it's pop3 services. I believe Yahoo offers the same. If you want everything to be hosted on your site then I don't really have any good recommendations because I've never delved into this myself, however a site like Hotscripts - http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Email_Systems/Web-based_Email/index.html - should give you a few options to check out. If you haven't used this site before the pay apps are normally listed at the top of the list and highlighted, but there are plenty of open-source/free scripts below.

Lots of stuff there. From talking to people who have built webmail apps, there's much that goes into them that's not thought about. Attachment handling is a big one.

Sure I could take the weeks to download, install and test out all of those apps to find the best or if they even work with DH... but I'd rather get some insight from people who have set one of those up before.

Oh yeah that's understandable, I always like knowing my options though =). Good luck in finding a painless replacement (thankfully pop3/imap is very portable). If you want to check out Roundcube you might want to look into what features the nighttime builds have compared to stable releases... you have more of a chance of hitting bugs but it might just have what you need. Good Luck m8.

Edit: Might find this interesting as well, from a fellow DreamHoster, http://www.whalesalad.com/2005/10/21/roundcube/.

Edit2: Well seemed like he smoked too much of the green stuff and paranoia took over, demo is no longer up, sorry =/Edited by tonyrayo on 02/01/06 06:33 PM (server time).

Yep, your right.

Squirrel mail just accesses your IMAP account just like Outlook or Mozilla does.

Roundcube does the same, but it seems to use a SQL db to help with the speed thing.

If it all really sucks, get a gmail account and forward your dreamhost mail there :)

an alternative to Squirrelmail (among MANY others) is www.ilohamail.org...I have it up and running on my DH account, you can try it if you would like at http://www.macjunkie.org/ilohamail/ just enter the info for YOUR site and it will let you connect and read your mail. It uses CSS for the most part so just about everything is customizable if you are familiar with that. Mine is a default install (takes about 1 minute to install)

Thanks for the info. Your macjunkie link doesn't load.

I should add one of my reasons for another webmail app is for clients. Squirrlemail is somewhat unpresentable. This would also rule out the gmail method (though I don't care much for gmail to begin with.) The whole "don't use folders" idea doesn't work for me.

try this instead...don't know why it wont work (didn't load for me either)

oh, and I agree with you, squirrelmail does suck...horribly!

ah, I figured it out, I just needed to remove the trailing slash...

In reply to:
try this instead...don't know why it wont work (didn't load for me either)

Thanks. Though, I'm not comfortable with entering my email l/p into a form on the web that someone posted a link to on a forum.

In reply to:
squirrelmail sucks

Yes it does. That's why I just forward all my email to gmail and check it that way.

> Squirrelmail does work... and its fine. ... Your issue may just have been transient,

Clearly YMMV. I have found SquirrelMail to be astonishingly poor. And reporting its many bugs to DH is a waste of time cos they are answered "Tough, we won't fix it cos it is not our code."

Try instead mail2web - though primitive, is far better.