Competitve Anaylsis - Zimbra, Scalix, GMail and more?

[eatit]

Is anyone doing a competitive analysis of interfaces with some of the other packages out there?

Zimbra is one interface that I think is great, it must have been a compelling reason why Yahoo just bought them.

I love the Zimbra interface, and have contemplated using it to replace our current system which uses sendmail, cyrus, and HORDE/IMP and Squirrelmail.

The AJAX is quite excellent, drag and drop, etc. I love being able to drag and drop emails into folders, drag them onto my calendar to create a related calendar item, etc. Unfortunately, it's a whole system replacement, MTA, IMAP server, etc. vs. just a standalone IMAP gateway.

Is any developer with RC taking a look at some of these all-in-one packages and seeing what can be adapted/augmented to the RC interface? I'm not trying to make the interface complicated, just trying to suggest ideas from interfaces that seem to work well.

Ryan

[eatit]

It seems as noone cares.

So many projects for email and calendaring out these days, sometimes people just want a simple and elegant webmail client.

Thanks for potentially considering my thoughts. I know a lot of people in the "Rate Roundcube 1-5" throw their undying love at the client, and while it beats the snot out of HORDE/IMP and Squirrelmail in terms of interface, I know there is stuff out there still....

:-)

[ssmith]

I'm a bit of a newcomer to this, but I get the impression that roundcube is just a frontend to a mail server, whereas zimbra and scalix are frontends and mailservers?

[bpat1434]

That's correct. RoundCube is only a front-end meant to read, delete, move, and other typical functions of a mail client. It's not a server of mail.

Zimbra is a complete solution meant for use in both a win32 and web-interface. It's meant more as an overall system for everything (administration, storage, reception & viewing). This isn't even on the same level as RoundCube. It's in a different category. It's essentially like Microsoft Exchange and Outlook paired together and open-sourced.

[gc]

 I have compared squirrelmail and roundcube - and while the interface of roundcube is much prettier it lacks some very basic functionality (as far as i can tell anyway) that in my view would fall into the minimal requirements area.

  All the other webmail clients I have seen (yahoo, gmail, squirrelmail) have these.
 
  See my post here for some basic missing features
  http://roundcubeforum.net/forum/index.php?topic=2576.0

  I got no response to those queries either - which I assume means no one cares terribly much .. it would be nice to know if there is some interest or perhaps if they are too difficultdo todo with the roundcube framework. The core squirrelmail dev team is small but they tend to be quite responsive.

  Good luck with your comparisons .. please post your thoughts as they evolve.