Using a plug-in architecture to keep the core application as simple as possible, SquirrelMail offers a webmail solution that's straightforward, lightweight . . . and free.

by Jeff Goldman [December 22, 2004]

The SquirrelMail project was founded in 1999 when Luke Ehresman and his brother Nathan decided to build a webmail tool for their own use. "They liked it so much that they shared it with some friends, who shared it with some friends, until they realized it was probably about time to turn it into an open source project," says Rick Castello, SquirrelMail's current Project Leader.

Key to the project from the beginning, Castello says, has been a desire to keep the application simple to install and to use, and to keep the number of requirements for running it as low as possible. "Basically, you can run SquirrelMail with just PHP and a Web server," he says. "You don't even need Perl, unless you want to use it to do your configuration."

SquirrelMail

As the project has grown over the years, Castello says, most additional functionality has been made available as a plug-in, rather than as an addition to the solution itself. Among those plug-ins are a variety of options for handling spam and for virus filtering. "We've stuck with the plug-in idea so that the core of SquirrelMail itself could stay really, really small," he says.

That simplicity allows the solution to be run on pretty much any platform an ISP may want to use. "It'll run on just about anything that you've got PHP on, usually with minor to no modification at all," Castello says. "We have a number of Windows installations, and we have pile upon pile of Linux and *nix and Sun installations."

Simple to run
For support, an ISP can turn to any of a number of different commercial support companies that have sprung up worldwide to support SquirrelMail—or they can refer to the SquirrelMail mailing lists. "Usually, people can go on the lists and have their questions answered relatively quickly," Castello says.

The solution's simplicity and ease of use, Castello says, mean that there really aren't any advanced skills required to install and run the solution. "I think that's really the biggest reason that a lot of people have come to us," he says. "It really is, out of the box, you're running ten minutes later—and if you're a newbie, you're probably still running half an hour later."

And once SquirrelMail is set up, he adds, there's not much more to do. "Once it's up and running, you're administering your IMAP server," Castello says. "We really are just a webmail interface, so assuming your mail is working properly, SquirrelMail is happy—it's rare that SquirrelMail has its own problems. It's usually just happy to pass through what you want to see, and pass back what you want to send."

Straightforward architecture
Dave Steinberg is president of the small hosting firm GeekISP. After trying a number of other webmail packages, Steinberg says, he settled on SquirrelMail—largely because of the plug-in architecture. The ability to use plug-ins to let his users manage their SpamAssassin settings and other filters without requiring another interface, he says, was extremely attractive.

The fact that the solution is lightweight and easy to use, Steinberg says, has also been a key strength. "We use four or five different plug-ins, and it's nice that I don't have to have eight different tools that all look different for my users to manage all their mail settings," he says. "The aggregation of everything in one place is a big thing—they keep everything simple."

Steinberg also says he likes the fact that he can read the source code and make sense of it, and that help is easy to find. "I've found that Rick Castello responds to bugs that I've had, and that the community there is active—it's easy to get in touch with them," he says. "Any problems that I might identify, they'll work on fixing them. And the system is stable; it works—and it works for the customers, too."

Castello says that kind of stability is a result of the Ehresmans' initial vision for the project. "I've worked with other open source projects, and this project is surprisingly non-spaghetti-like," he says. "They said, 'We don't want bloat—we want this to be something that can fit on a small footprint,' and that's why they decided to go with the plug-in architecture from the beginning."

— End

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