@scottalanmiller

Hey guys! One of our customers contacted us saying that we're being mentioned here. Thank you and it's good to be here!

@IRJ said in Building a Mail Server:

@scottalanmiller said in Building a Mail Server:

@Pete-S said in Building a Mail Server:

If you put cpanel on a server - not saying you should - but don't you get a complete mail setup with dovecot, postfix, spamassasin and the whole shebang? And then set it to relay smtp through mailgun.

Isn't that what all those website and email providers do? Or are they each running custom configs?

Yes, and no business considers that an email solution. Yes, it technically sends and receives email, but in a nearly useless fashion.

Yeah this is pretty much good enough for personal sites, but that's about it. You get mail and basic calendar and that's it. Very ugly web interfaces through cpanel mail

That's correct but cPanel is not to blame here. They would include anything good enough and free (even more now when SquirrelMail got dropped out and only two webmails are left), but the current self-hosted webmail apps market is pretty outdated without much progress being made for years and most of the apps just looking old, not using the latest advancements in technology or just lacking features.

The other thing is the integration of the targeted webmail app with the control panel itself. Of course, you can always download RoundCube and install it on your hosting account, but if you want to have only one RoundCube installation serving the entire server, then you must develop an integration. This is what cPanel does with RoundCube and what has to be done in case of any other webmail app. So basically, developing and maintaining the integration just creates more work for them and that is something I doubt they want.

If right from the beginning you're not developing software to be plug and play all the way, it's really hard to do anything later. A good example of this is Zimbra which needs a blank server to start with and you just can't use that server for anything else. You also can't install Zimbra on the server that already has your emails, let alone on a cPanel/Plesk server which has an ecosystem of its own.

Thankfully, most of the control panels have pretty good API and plugin systems which let you do the integrations yourself and this is exactly what we at CrossBox did, among other things of course :relieved_face:

@scottalanmiller

cough RAM cough

@scottalanmiller

cough RAM cough

@IRJ said in Building a Mail Server:

@scottalanmiller said in Building a Mail Server:

@Pete-S said in Building a Mail Server:

If you put cpanel on a server - not saying you should - but don't you get a complete mail setup with dovecot, postfix, spamassasin and the whole shebang? And then set it to relay smtp through mailgun.

Isn't that what all those website and email providers do? Or are they each running custom configs?

Yes, and no business considers that an email solution. Yes, it technically sends and receives email, but in a nearly useless fashion.

Yeah this is pretty much good enough for personal sites, but that's about it. You get mail and basic calendar and that's it. Very ugly web interfaces through cpanel mail

That's correct but cPanel is not to blame here. They would include anything good enough and free (even more now when SquirrelMail got dropped out and only two webmails are left), but the current self-hosted webmail apps market is pretty outdated without much progress being made for years and most of the apps just looking old, not using the latest advancements in technology or just lacking features.

The other thing is the integration of the targeted webmail app with the control panel itself. Of course, you can always download RoundCube and install it on your hosting account, but if you want to have only one RoundCube installation serving the entire server, then you must develop an integration. This is what cPanel does with RoundCube and what has to be done in case of any other webmail app. So basically, developing and maintaining the integration just creates more work for them and that is something I doubt they want.

If right from the beginning you're not developing software to be plug and play all the way, it's really hard to do anything later. A good example of this is Zimbra which needs a blank server to start with and you just can't use that server for anything else. You also can't install Zimbra on the server that already has your emails, let alone on a cPanel/Plesk server which has an ecosystem of its own.

Thankfully, most of the control panels have pretty good API and plugin systems which let you do the integrations yourself and this is exactly what we at CrossBox did, among other things of course :relieved_face:

@scottalanmiller

Hey guys! One of our customers contacted us saying that we're being mentioned here. Thank you and it's good to be here!