Since I’ve used GMail and loved it, I’ve been looking for an AJAX Webmail program to use as my proprietary e-mail client for my mail on this server (sid@rev2.org). Obviously, GMail doesn’t support POP-in (input a pop-account and manage another e-mail from a third-party server) but does POP-out, which is no use. So I recently came across RoundCube, a PHP/AJAX open source Webmail system and installed it on my server.
So far, I’m impressed. It’s not GMail or even Yahoo! new Oddpost beta, but it is better than current Webmail clients such as Squirrel Mail, Horde etc which come preinstalled with most web servers. I have to say, it could’ve been documented better and the installation instructions could be clearer, but that doesn’t make it a bad product.
Roudcube shares a simple and intuitive interface and is fairly fast, at least compared to some other webmail services.
Sadly, it misses some advanced features other than the usual mail and address book. Of course, since it’s open source, I can’t say much on this because if I do, I’ll be inclined to contribute.
But if some one does ‘vamp it up’, and I really urge a good programmer or programmers to do so, with more AJAX, an RSS aggregator, more features, better branding and quite possibly a light-weight business model (eg. a RoundCube.com service) with some consultation from the original team, RoundCube will be a killer product for online webmail.
