Why does webmail suck?

H

[H]EMI_426

2[H]4U
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Feb 19, 2001
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So, I have a FreeBSD box that hosts my domain. There's about forty people that use the machine for various things. One of the services provided is mail, and for the users that travel a lot there's webmail via squirrelmail if they don't have any other means of access.

Why does webmail suck so much? I had a hell of a time getting Squirrelmail working properly again after updating PHP4 (via ports) last night, simply cause of problems with php4, the OpenSSL php4 module, the imap php4 module, Squirrelmail not playing nice with the OpenSSL php4 module and insisting on php4 being built with OpenSSL support built in to the base php4 binary, etc. It took four rebuilds of php4 (and the modues) along with three rebuilds of squirrelmail before it was all sorted out.

I generally dislike php4 on principle. I did web programming with php4 for a while, so it's not a dislike of the language itself, it's a dislike of the process of having to update it more often than I update the kernel/world on my FreeBSD box. I almost want to set an "uptime between php4 rebuilds" clock somewhere.

Anyway, back to my original rant...After fighting with (and defeating) squirrelmail for about forty-five minutes I decided to look around for other webmail systems. I found several that were interesting, but they all sucked in some form or amother. Some required php4 again, which means they probably wouldn't be much better. Some are just functionally slower than squirrelmail. Some require stupid extras like MySQL. Some of them do insanely stupid things, like not using IMAP and just giving you access to the raw spool files, which isn't a smart idea on a machine that may actually try to write to those files while you're reading from them without respecting locks.

So...There wasn't much point to this post besides expressing my general frustration towards webmail clients in general. Squirrelmail is about the best of a bad lot...Kind of like getting to pick your method of execution: you're still dead when it's all over.

What I would like to see from a good webmail client:

  • Fast. I know it's handling everything on the same machine, but it shouldn't churn like squirrelmail/horde/etc. do
  • Uses IMAP. No raw spool access.
  • Supports SSL and TLS. Not everyone's going to be running it on the same machine the mail server lives on, and even if you do run it plaintext it should not allow plain or login-type auth over plaintext connections.
  • Written in something besides a scripting language. I'm tired of dealing with php4. Perl isn't quite so bad from an admin point of view, but I'd rather see something solid in C or the like. Hell, even an interpreted language that doesn't have exploit-of-the-week syndrome would work...Ruby on Rails?
  • Good interface. Squirrelmail's interface, besides being fairly boring and ugly, isn't too awful from an end-user point of view. Someone could do something similar and make it look nice. Oh, and for the love of God, do not use a stop sign for your "exit" function (yes, that means you, Roundcube).
  • Good functionality in addition to e-mail. LDAP address lookup, an addressbook-type system, mailbox management, etc.

That's really about it. I don't think that's too much to ask, is it?
 
Webmail always sucks. I'd like to see a good ncurses based email client supporting pop3 and imap, with a good address book, so I can use it anywhere via SSH. :cool:
 
Sounds like you want mutt. :)

Webmail is one of those things that should be more polished by now...Kind of like there should also be a good open-source calendaring system, similar to Oracle Calendar...But there isn't. It just kind of amazes me.
 
I feel your pain but from teh dark side of things.

I had to spend all last weekend configuring our Eschange 2003 environment to take the lead with the new 2003 OWA out in the front as opposed to our old 5.5 OWA system.

BLEH!

I would have been soooo much happier if it was a *nix based system with Sendmail.
 
Ya know, the few times I've used that OWA setup (from an end-user point of view), it pretty much kicked the snot out of any of the webmail apps available in the *nix world. Pretty sad, isn't it?
 
I really like roundcube webmail, however, I wouldn't suggest it as a replacement right away...It just came out recently, they are adding features with the next release, so if something isnt there, look for it soon, or make a request!

Since you seem to have a disdain for php ATM, you may not want to try it out, but I do highly recommend it, it is very clean, very easy to setup, it runs quick on my humble mailserver even with 15-20 people using it at once.


check it out at
http://roundcube.net/
 
Roundcube wants MySQL. I'm not putting MySQL on a machine strictly for webmail. Nothing else I run wants or needs it...If I could build the thing without MySQL support it might be interesting.

Oh, and they need to ditch that stop-sign-looking icon for the exit button.
 
From a user standpoint, I still side with Exchange 2003 OWA. Yeah, I know that's blasphemy here. But, it is a good product and is easy to use.
 
MorfiusX said:
From a user standpoint, I still side with Exchange 2003 OWA. Yeah, I know that's blasphemy here. But, it is a good product and is easy to use.
Click to expand...
But when things go wrong.... good GOD do they go wrong! (administration side)

:)
 
I am only getting into setting up some servers for personal use so I can't say if this meets your needs or not(looks like you would have to build it yourself, no freebsd binaries that I can see and I think it may want mysql), but have you looked at zimbra (www.zimbra.com)?
 
Zimbra looks interesting, but it strikes me as the all-in-wonder product and their webpages are full of management-enchanting speak.

Right now I just want webmail. I don't want to mess with calendaring or anything of the sort.

The Hula Project is similar to this. Both are interesting, but way too heavy-duty for what I want.
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
Ya know, the few times I've used that OWA setup (from an end-user point of view), it pretty much kicked the snot out of any of the webmail apps available in the *nix world. Pretty sad, isn't it?
Click to expand...

I'll have to agree with you there. Maybe if some open-source project suddenly had millions of dollars to throw at developing a webmail client, the OSS community could have something similar :p

I do remember setting up Outlook and OWA for a class once. MAN that was a lot of configuration. Granted I've never set up a *nix mail server before, so maybe it's a comparable amount of work.
 
Both BoboMail and mailr look quite interesting. mailr seems better from a "look & feel" point of view, but I may have to give them both a shot. Thanks for the suggestions; I hadn't seen either of these before.

Since neither of them exists in the FreeBSD ports tree, maybe I can submit a few new ports as well.

fastmail looks like a provided service, not a webmail application. I don't care to depend on someone else's stuff.
 
Q-Ball said:
I'll have to agree with you there. Maybe if some open-source project suddenly had millions of dollars to throw at developing a webmail client, the OSS community could have something similar :p

I do remember setting up Outlook and OWA for a class once. MAN that was a lot of configuration. Granted I've never set up a *nix mail server before, so maybe it's a comparable amount of work.
Click to expand...
You really should check out Exchange 2003. OWA 2003 is excellent. The biggest caveat though is you will need Active Directory.
 
It's pretty.... and it works. THat's about all I can say for Exchange 2k3 OWA
 
mailr looks pretty nice. If I can somehow get it to build without requiring a database (I really have serious opposition to using a database just for e-mail address books), I'll give it a shot.
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
mailr looks pretty nice. If I can somehow get it to build without requiring a database (I really have serious opposition to using a database just for e-mail address books), I'll give it a shot.
Click to expand...

Why are you so reluctant to use databases?
 
Cause I'm not going to run one just to handle stuff for webmail. If I had other services that wanted it I wouldn't be so concerned about it, but from a security/back-up/admin point of view, it's just more overhead.

Using a database to store addresses for webmail is like using a bazooka to kill gnats.

Maybe I can hack around with SQLite and get it to just use a flat file for storage or something of the sort. I really have no desire to set up a full-blown RDB for webmail.
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
Cause I'm not going to run one just to handle stuff for webmail. If I had other services that wanted it I wouldn't be so concerned about it, but from a security/back-up/admin point of view, it's just more overhead.

Using a database to store addresses for webmail is like using a bazooka to kill gnats.

Maybe I can hack around with SQLite and get it to just use a flat file for storage or something of the sort. I really have no desire to set up a full-blown RDB for webmail.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how the setup is on FreeBSD, but on (Gentoo) Linux it's literally two commands to setup mySQL in a secure configuration once it's installed. Probably the same for other databases, such as SQLite and PostgreSQL. I'm sure it will be easier than creating your own half-database setup.
 
I'm not arguing that it's hard to do. I'm arguing that I shouldn't have to do it. It's a philosophical difference, I guess. I'm not one to pile on services to a machine that just aren't really needed.
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
I'm not arguing that it's hard to do. I'm arguing that I shouldn't have to do it. It's a philosophical difference, I guess. I'm not one to pile on services to a machine that just aren't really needed.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Makes sense to me from a security standpoint. The more services you have running, the more exploits you're vulnerable to. Why have a RDB running when it's total overkill for what it's really doing and said RDB is not doing anything else on the box?

Also, why would you want to use a RDB to store addresses? Is there a real advantage to it? I guess I see the advantage if you're rolling out a high-traffic mail server with a few hundred or a few thousand users to keep track of. Heck, I thought the database was for storing the user's mail messages. Of course I've never played much with mail servers, so I was just taking a wild guess. Would there even be a point to storing the messages in a database?
 
CommuniGate Pro. Their standard webmail interface is aweful but there sure are a lot of skins available for it.
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
Cause I'm not going to run one just to handle stuff for webmail. If I had other services that wanted it I wouldn't be so concerned about it, but from a security/back-up/admin point of view, it's just more overhead.

Using a database to store addresses for webmail is like using a bazooka to kill gnats.

Maybe I can hack around with SQLite and get it to just use a flat file for storage or something of the sort. I really have no desire to set up a full-blown RDB for webmail.
Click to expand...

What's your worry then? It's not like MySQL is a real database.
 
Clockwork said:
What's your worry then? It's not like MySQL is a real database.
Click to expand...
Nice. :)

My problems aren't with running a database per se. The box can handle the load, etc. I'd firewall off the ports from the outside as well as restrict them to listen on localhost only, etc. The problem is I just don't want to. I shouldn't have to run/support/update some large third-party app to support webmail.
 
well if webmail itself is the problem to you, then i just simply suggested an alternative. unless you plan on "improving" webmail because it "sucks"

if you want something on ruby, i saw a guy post about mailr. something with imap and ssl, would probably be www.fastmail.fm. i used to use it, love it, but i got my own mail server now running on Hivemail.
 
Since you are seeming fairly specific about what you want, have you considered

a) coding your own project
(or have someone code it for you, if you are concerned about secure code and any other possible problems/objections)

or

b) Modifying the code of another webmail project/system.
You could easily modify the Roundcube code to not require mysql anymore.
You could also just as easily use some of the already available IMAP code for your webmail system, all you have to do is write some CSS and a little bit of html to make an actual interface. (ex: look at the source of roundcube to see what I am talking about --the program/lib directory of a roundcube installation is an example of inclusion of code from other projects)

IMO, if you are this picky about your webmail system(or pretty much any other piece of software...OSS at least), then I think no matter what, you are going to end up coding (or modifying code) on your own to get everything the way you want.
 
draconius: I have thought about what you've suggested, actually. I'm looking in to several things to try, but writing my own is looking more and more interesting.
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
draconius: I have thought about what you've suggested, actually. I'm looking in to several things to try, but writing my own is looking more and more interesting.
Click to expand...
I ended up writing (and still am working on!) a CMS for my website....I really couldn't find a single pre-packaged CMS that I liked, and so what the hell, why not do my own. i learned alot of php and sql stuff along the way, alot of css and html design too.

try it out!
 
Horde is good...I just use gmail though because it's features are state of the art compared to standalone email clients.
 
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