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SquirrelMail is a project that aims to provide both a web-based email client and a proxy server for the
IMAP In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...
protocol. The latest stable version 1.4.23-svn is tested with PHP up to version 8.1 and replaces version 1.4.22 which can only run on PHP version 5.0-5.4. The svn part in the version name points out that bugfixes and minor improvements are no longer published as new versions, but instead are maintained within
Apache Subversion Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name ''svn'') is a version control system distributed as open source under the Apache License. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files su ...
version control system.


History

The webmail portion of the project was started by Nathan and Luke Ehresman in 1999 and is written in
PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...
. SquirrelMail can be employed in conjunction with a LAMP "stack", and any other operating systems that support PHP are supported as well. The web server needs access to the IMAP server hosting the email and to an
SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typi ...
server to be able to send mails. SquirrelMail webmail outputs valid
HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...
4.0 for its presentation, making it compatible with a majority of current
web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
s. SquirrelMail webmail uses a plugin architecture to accommodate additional features around the core application, and over 200 plugins are available on the SquirrelMail website. The SquirrelMail IMAP proxy server product was created in 2002 by Dave McMurtrie while at the
University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
(where it was named "up-imapproxy", although it has become more commonly known as "imapproxy") and adopted by the SquirrelMail team in 2010. It is written in C and is primarily made to provide stateful connections for stateless webmail client software to an IMAP server, thus avoiding new IMAP logins for every client action and in some cases significantly improving webmail performance. Both SquirrelMail products are
free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...
subject to the terms of the
GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
version 2 or any later version. SquirrelMail webmail was included in the repositories of many major
Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...
s and is independently downloaded by thousands of people every month.


Platforms

SquirrelMail webmail is available for any platform supporting PHP. Most commonly used platforms include
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
,
FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...
,
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
and the server variants of
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
. SquirrelMail IMAP Proxy compiles on most flavors of
Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
, and can generally be used on the same platforms that the webmail product can with the exception of Microsoft Windows, unless used in a
Cygwin Cygwin ( ) is a free and open-source Unix-like environment and command-line interface (CLI) for Microsoft Windows. The project also provides a software repository containing open-source packages. Cygwin allows source code for Unix-like operati ...
or similar environment. Apple shipped SquirrelMail as their supported web mail solution in
Mac OS X Server Mac OS X Server is a series of Discontinued software, discontinued Unix-like server operating systems developed by Apple Inc., based on macOS. It provided server functionality and system administration tools, and tools to manage both macOS ...
.


Plugins

The SquirrelMail webmail client itself is a complete webmail system, but extra features are available in the form of plugins. There are over 200 third-party plugins available for download from the SquirrelMail website and SquirrelMail ships with several "standard" or "core" plugins.


Internationalization

SquirrelMail webmail has been translated into over 50 languages including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, and Spanish.


Notable installations

SquirrelMail has been implemented as the official email system of the Prime Minister's Office of the Republic of India for its security advantages over Microsoft's
Outlook Express Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, from Windows ...
. In 2004
HEC Montréal HEC Montréal (; English: ''High Commercial Studies of Montreal'') is a bilingual public business school located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1907, HEC Montréal is the graduate business school of the Université de Montréal and is ...
business school deployed SquirrelMail as part of a comprehensive webmail solution, to support thousands of users.


See also

*
Comparison of e-mail clients The following tables compare general and technical features of notable non-web-based email client programs. General Basic general information about the clients: creator/company, O/S, license, and interface. Release history A brief digest ...
* Internet Messaging Program * Roundcube


References


External links

* {{E-mail clients Email clients Proxy server software for Linux Free email software Free software programmed in PHP Free software webmail