[WEB4LIB] Web-based intranet email

[bmenk at hampton.lib.nh.us]

I explored this quite recently for our small public library (staff of 15) 
where we have a POP/SMTP server running on Novell 3.12 and 
most of our workstations are NT or W95 on an NT 4.0 network.

I looked at several packages including: Emurl, EmuMail, WebMail 
and eventually settled on WebMail at $349 for a 25-user license. I 
got them from the TUCOWS and Dave Central 
(www.davecenral.com) archives.  

All of them do the "local Hotmail" thing in conjunction with an 
existing POP/SMTP.  WebMail includes its own an SMTP server 
as well.  They all seemed reasonably fast and secure.  The 
interfaces were all pretty decent and very "Hotmail-like".  My less-
than-computer-literate staff have adapted to this pretty quickly.

I initially tried EmuMail with an old copy of O'Reilly Website - 
couldn't get it to work and defeated all efforts by their tech support 
to make it work (it would send and receive mail, it just wouldn't 
display the message text).  I give their tech support for really 
working with the problem even though I was just using the demo.

Later, a new server running MSIIS 4, I tried it again.  Same 
troubles.  They had a new release coming out that they thought 
would fix it, but I couldn't wait.

I then tried Emurl which as I recall was about $400 for the lowest 
level license.  That too would not run on either of my web servers.  
Their tech support was willing to try to fix it, but I was getting tired 
of such things.

Finally I tried WebMail from Infinite Technologies.  It worked "out of 
the download" without any problems, though you do need to 
specify an alternate port if you're running it on the same machine 
as a web server.  When I did have some address book problems 
later on, they were able to fix it quickly for me.  Their sales team is 
fairly aggressive though - they called me within an hour of 
downloading the demo and kept calling throughout the trial period.

The EmuMail and Emurl problems were both pinned down to 
security permissions on specific directories for those of you who 
might be curious.

Please contact me directly if I can be of further help.

Bobb Menk
Lane Memorial Library, Hampton NH
bmenk at hampton.lib.nh.us


On 2 Apr 99, Don Yarman wrote:


> Web4Libbers--
> 
> Does anyone know of (or better yet, is anyone using)
> a Web-based email system for a local network?  I'm
> thinking of something like a local Hotmail, an intranet
> page that the staff can go to, log in, and do their
> email stuff.
> 
> Such a thing has got to exist, right?  The only thing
> I'm finding in my searches are existing free email
> services -- ~actual~ Hotmail-type things, instead of
> ones I can set up internally for staff use.  
> 
> Please tell me that I'm not clinging to another
> pipe dream.  I hate when that happens.
> 
> On the lookout for when the Iceman cometh, I remain
> your dreamer and visionary,
> 
>                          Don Yarman
>                          Grandview Hts Public Library
>                          yarmando at clc.lib.oh.us