Exchange-Compatible Webmail Alternatives?

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."

imp

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.

Exchange Server 2003

Perhaps it's too obvious, but Exchange 2003 and Windows Server 2003 share the goal to be secure by design, secure by default, and secure in deployment. [microsoft.com]

SquirrelMail - Webmail for nuts

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.

Make it custom

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

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.

Just about anything will work

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.

could avoid webmail and use VPN instead.

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.

Calendaring

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! :)

Let the morons begin

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

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.

twiggi is worth a look

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.

JiCal does some of the calendaring..

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.

JiCal

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.

Re:Samsung Contact

It's an evolution of HP's OpenMail, sounds very capable, but is horrendously expensive.