Alternative To Squirrelmail And Horde

[kfordham281]

Anyone know of a good alternative to either of the webmail programs above? Is it even possible to use another email program? Horde and SquirrelMail are pretty basic; there has to be something better out there.

 

(apparently I can't spell alternative in the subject line)

Edited May 7, 2006 by kfordham281

[wampthing]

I dont know about a program that is better. I have my email address set to forward to gmail. I then Have gmail put my personal address as the return address.

Thats the best solution i have found.

[Madmanmcp]

Horde and Squirrelmail are just the two web based email programs that TCH supplies for our use. You can use any program that supports POP3 or IMAP to download mail and access it on your computer. Outlook and Outlook Express come free with Windows and will work just fine.

[stevevan]

While it's not webmail, you can also look at Thunderbird. It's also free and used by many of the TCH family.

[j2k4b]

I use Google Hosted with my domain. All I had to do is signup and have TCH move my domain to the Gmail MX servers and Poof! IT works great.

 

Also I heard Roundcube is a great program too.

[kfordham281]

I found Roundcube last night actually. "Alternative to Squirrelmail" on google and it's the first hit that comes up. Imagine that... Interesting on the google hosted email. Is that still accessed by going to something like www.yourdomainname.com/gmail or something similar?

Edited May 8, 2006 by kfordham281

[TCH-Bruce]

To access gmail you goto gmail.google.com/gmail it is not associated with your domain.

 

You can withing GMail set your return address to be your domain name which when email sent back to you will be forwarded from the TCH server back to GMail.

[j2k4b]

Mine is h_tp://mail.google.com/hosted/domainhere . com

Edited May 8, 2006 by j2k4b

[TCH-Bruce]

Well, I guess I should look into this before giving any more answers. I have never used it and all I have is a personal gmail account. Looks like Jason knows more about it.

[Deverill]

Yes, the Google hosted email for your domain is a new-ish thing that you have to sign up for and they have to approve. It's in beta now. You just get them set up and then give the info from their welcome email to the TCH tech guys and they'll hook up your MX records to work with it. I've been using it for about 1.5 months and it works great.

[wampthing]

If an email server was blacklisted, and one was to start hosting their email through Gmail, would that un-blacklist the email address?

[abinidi]

Can I modify the MX records for a parked domain while leaving the MX records intact for the main domain and for another parked domain?

 

Or is the MX record for all domains parked on the account?

[TCH-Bruce]

Paul, that's a technical question that would best be answered by the help desk.

[abinidi]

Help desk response (since there are curious minds out there that will want to know) is that you can modify the MX record for only one of many parked domains, but it has to be done by the help desk.

 

If you try to make the modifications on your own, you'll be up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle.

 

However, if you only have one domain (no parked domains) and you want to modify the MX record, you can do it yourself in cPanel. (Ask the helpdesk if the MX modification isn't on your cPanel X Mail screen.)

[Deverill]

If an email server was blacklisted, and one was to start hosting their email through Gmail, would that un-blacklist the email address?

That would depend on whether the blacklisting agent was using domain names or IPs. It would probably not help is my guess. I may be wrong but I believe many use both but the majority use domain names primarily.

 

Now tell me you're not planning something nefarious.

[TCH-Tim]

If an email server was blacklisted, and one was to start hosting their email through Gmail, would that un-blacklist the email address?

Why, you get yourself blacklisted?

[wampthing]

I dont even know what nefarious means. Is it like necromaniac?

 

I am blacklisted, but help desk is working on it. Comcast is being slow to take us off their poopoo list.

[abinidi]

I got Google to host my MX records today, and it's pretty cool. Setup was easy, and now I can create up to 25 accounts on my domain with 2GB of storage space per account.

 

Plus, unlike normal Gmail accounts, the accounts I create never expire. So you don't have to be logging in every couple of months to keep the account active.

 

So my question is this: when an email is sent to my address, but the MX record points it at Gmail, does the message still take up bandwith space on my account?

[davehickey]

I got Google to host my MX records today,

 

Can I ask how long it took to get it set up? I lodged an application the other day (Monday?) and so far I haven't heard anything back.

 

On a slightly different tack, does anyone know what type of customers Google is after? (ie What are the best answers to give to get accepted...)

[Deverill]

I think they give preference to people with adwords accounts and maybe gmail. I haven't heard what the "right answers" are though.

 

I do know I got my gmail acct quickly because I was an active adwords user back whenever that was.

[abinidi]

I applied for it on Monday, after reading about it in this thread, and I got a response from them yesterday.

 

I put that I have a domain for personal use, wtih only 10 accounts needed. I've been an active gmail user for almost 2 years, and briefly had an adwords account before I realized that it was cluttering my blog and made me look like I was trying to make money off of my friends visits. So my google adwors lasted all of a week on my blog.

 

I applied yesterday for an account for a commercial real estate website that I maintain. I haven't heard back yet.

[MikeJ]

So my question is this: when an email is sent to my address, but the MX record points it at Gmail, does the message still take up bandwith space on my account?

 

Since you have your MX records pointing at Google, the TCH servers have no interaction with your incoming email, and therefore it will not count against your bandwidth.

[abinidi]

Hmmm. Thanks Mike.

 

For curiosity's sake then, I have an additional question. Is the MX record tied to my domain at TCH? I mean, if it is the TCH techs / cPanel for my domain that edits the MX record, doesn't the mail hit my server before being told where to go (figurativley ?) Or does setting the MX record set some external setting somewhere that directs the routing of mail.

 

I guess I just don't know enough about how mail is routed to its destination.

[Madmanmcp]

Is the MX record tied to my domain at TCH?

Yes

doesn't the mail hit my server before being told where to go

yes and no

It hits the TCH Doman Name Server and reads the MX record and goes out, so technically it doesn't reach the shared server you are on.

[abinidi]

I applied yesterday for an account for a commercial real estate website that I maintain. I haven't heard back yet.

 

For what its worth, I got the invitation for this commercial site today, so for me, turnaround was about 2 working days on both accounts.

[davehickey]

Looks like my first GMail Hosted request went unanswered, so I created a GMail account and tried again using that and three days later got an invite.

 

Looks like I now need to get the Helpdesk guys to change the MX records - I can't see anywhere to do this in cPanel.

[wampthing]

So once you have an account with google set up, how do you work with forwards etc. Is there a control panel that will let you do the same things that you can in Cpanel?

[Deverill]

If you are a user of Google hosted email then it looks just like regular Gmail. All the features are the same including the "delete nothing - search" mindset.

 

As administrator you have a menu that will let you create/delete/reset passwords on accounts and you can also set up mailing lists so you can email to a group name and have multiple recipients.

 

Forwards would be set up at the individual email address, not for the whole domain.

 

For anyone not following this thread, hosted Gmail is like Gmail but your email address is xyz@****** and lets you do like I did for our church -- the website is here at TCH but the email, so-and-so@cwckw.org, goes to a special login place at Gmail for that particular person at our church. That way the leaders and department heads can switch from DSL to Cable and we have only one address for them which they can get even on vacation... as long as they have a web browser.

[abinidi]

You can use email groups like you can for forwarders. Here's the limiter, though: with Gmail, the only addresses you can add to your group are people on your domain.

 

Maybe an example will make this more clear.

 

Let's say I have a domain, example.com with Google hosting my email.

 

On my domain, I have three users with accounts: Larry, Sally, and Ruby_Mae.

 

As an administrator, I can create a group name (basically an alias or forwarder) that can send messages, but I can only send them to Larry, Sally and Ruby_Mae. I can't send them to people who don't have accounts on my domain.

 

How do I get around that?

 

I create a gmail address (like forwarder@example.com). And I set Gmail (in account preferences) to forward all incoming mail to an external account.

 

So there is a gmail address/account associated with the forwarder, but I don't have to give the password to anybody, so it doesn't get used unless I want it to.

 

It's an inelegant solution, and I wish Gmail would allow you to include people in your forwarder group who aren't on your domin. But maybe in a later release of the product.

 

It is, after all, still in beta (if that has any meaning with Google anymore. It seems like everything but their regular search engine is still in beta, and has been for years).

[wampthing]

abinidi, thanks for your response

 

I have moved over one of my test sites to see how things work. I like it enough to move my main site over there since I dont have to wory about forwards to outside email addresses on that site. (I am currently just waiting for the MX records to propagate)

 

I found this post in the google help page that might be of interest. It will allow you to ad a login on your own website.

I have put it on my site.

 

><form action="https://www.google.com/hosted/[domain]/LoginAction" 
method="post" name="login"> 
<input type="hidden" name="at" value="null"> 
<input type="hidden" name="continue" 
value="https://mail.google.com/hosted/[domain]"> 
<input type="hidden" name="service" value="mail"> 
  <input type="hidden" name="page" value="login"> 
<font size="2" color="#FFFF99" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
Username: 
<br> 
<input type="text" name="userName" size="18">@[domain]</font> 
<font size="2" color="#FFFF99" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> 
Password:</font><br> 
<input type="password" name="password" size="18"><input type="submit" 
value="Sign In"> 
</form>

[abinidi]

Hey, Crazy Dave -- thanks! Works like a charm, after I realized I had to change the [domain] variable...

[kfordham281]

I ended up installing roundcube and to say I was blown away would be an understatement. Awesome application to say the least. I suggest everyone give it a try who is tired of horde and squirrelmail. The program is a little buggy, but for the most part works fantastic. Once it's out of beta I suspect it will get even better.