Sometimes it's just a feeling, you read a series of postings and you get the impression that's arrogant.
Or perhaps it just got out of hand, who knows. Or perhaps just some people cannot click or whatever.
It just started badly and ended up badly, no hard feelings.
I am not sure there was a general point, just you came across as unfriendly and arrogant.
Of course you may not have intended to, but that's how you came across.
In that situation Patrick (who I worked out is a community user too as he doesn't belong to the Kopano group) replied in an unfriendly way and everything got out of control.
Anyway let's leave it as it is. It looks like you found the right product for you.
For which one is better, the question remains as we do have diverging opinions.
As I said I never criticised with you not choosing Zimbra, there are many products.
I do instead disagree with you entirely on the community not being helpful and the production readiness of the product.
I think your approach to the community was wrong and perhaps that's why you did not receive the information you needed.
Every community is different and perhaps the approach to each of them has to be different.
As I said I run it in production and I have no downtime more than Microsoft does or whatever. And I am not even on their official releases but on the nightly builds.
So in the subject of production readiness that's again a matter of judgement and I do believe the opposite than you do.
By all means you can believe what you want, but I am not an employee, nor a reseller, nor a developer, nor anything else.
I am a user and if someone asks me which car I like, well, I'll give them my honest opinion.
Just to be clear, I am NOT a kopano employee nor a QA tester nor I own shares nor anything else, whatsoever.
I do not resell Kopano nor I am one of their partners.
I am a COMMUNITY user like many others who like their product and, in the same way as if you ask someone if they prefer a Porsche or a Ferrari, most would be very passionate about their choice.
Me feeling passionate about Kopano vs other products has nothing to do with me being associated with Kopano or any OTHER software company.
Zimbra is free and stable? Well yes, if you do not need 50% of the features they have.
Kopano is free? yes, if you agree with the model of the nightly builds.
YOU choose the one you prefer, but to say that one is better than the other one? Really trust me, I can't.
The marketplace includes may products, with Microsoft, Google, Zimbra, Kopano, whatever else there is which I may not even know.
So by all means if you are happy with Zimbra I'll be happy too.
In terms of production readyness, that's entirely your judgement.
I have spent my entire career in IT in very senior roles (particularly in the financial services where you do not really want to have issues with production code) and I can tell you that I am very very happy to run Kopano in my production environment even with the nightly builds.
When I have issues I have been always helped either by the community or Kopano directly.
yes I take the nightly builds but I am capable of doing my own testing and judge whether to push them live or not.
Therefore by all means, choose the product you prefer, but do not go around rubbishing other products because there are other people, for example like myself, who has the opposite point of view and no matter how long and how much you try to convince me you will not be able to.
I did not disagree with you about Zimbra nor any other product, so please do not comment on products that you do not know or that you have not spent the time approaching correctly in the light of THEIR (not yours) community model.
Zimbra community model is different. They give you the official builds but no advanced features.
Kopano gives you the advanced features but nightly builds.
Which one is better? It depends on the uses. I need Kopano for the advanced features, you perhaps Zimbra because you prefer to install that one.
The world is different for everyone so choose the one you like and I do too.
we will be all too happy if you choose something else 
so please go and get Zimbra, install it, and please do not email me.
great, so get Zimbra and we will all be very happy
I think it's perhaps people on the forums (like me) got fed up with your arrogance?
When I did go to Kopano / zarafa, or whichever software I use, I went kindly and trying to help for as much as I was helped, and this way I went far.
If you just go somewhere and tell them how arrogant you are, perhaps the response is: perhaps if you pay someone will reply to you?
I certainly wouldn't want to spend my time helping you even if, frankly, I could just do it as I do have Centos too.
Patrick ( who I do not know what it is) simply pointed out that if you do want instant replies you need to have a subscription to have instant support.
Fair enough, that's same as RedHat vs Centos.
perhaps if you are not rude to people but you talk to them in a constructive way you will have more success.
A community is made of people trying to help. Otherwise there is no community.
That's at least what I do, with kopano or anything else.
frankly I do agree with Patrick, your comments aren't very helpful. If it was me in the Kopano community I wouldn't reply.
If you want to help a community the best you can do is to HELP not to slag them off.
That's at least what I try to do.
Anyway I have work to do.
I'd be very very happy to look at alternatives that give me what Kopano does.
I did try a few times and I just came back to Kopano.
As I said my usercase is probably not the majority as the features I need are the most advanced.
Essentially I need to have my own office on the go at the client site with one browser (ONLY).
There is nothing else on the market that lets me do this in the community space.
At least not that I know of.
@mcostan said in Finding the Best Open Source Email Solutions:
Hi, My use is perhaps not the usual user so I do understand if perhaps you do not need any of the following.
I tend to work away from the office quite a lot and I work on desktops which aren't mine, but at the client site, therefore I cannot install anything on their PC.
Therefore I need a fully integrated solution which I can replicate in the same way at home as when I am (mostly the case) on site.
That includes:
a) email of course
b) activesync support for mobile devices (free with z-push). As I have all the mobile phones synced in native protocol. This way I have everything synced on the mobile phones, including tasks, notes, contacts, email etc. etc. Natively.
c) Outlook 2016 support with Exchange integration (not IMAP, but proper activesync) (comes again with z-push). When I go home I use Outlook 2016 and I tend to see that activesync and full integration is a lot better than IMAP.
d) very important for me. Cloud storage integrated with the main webapp application. I can create e-mails from attachments to and from the cloud and when I get back home, my main PC has the files on the cloud itself. It's all integrated in webapp. I have owncloud running and I can see my files everywhere I go, within the application. They are remotely synced on the main server and on the phone when I need.
e) chat (mostly) and videoconferencing which I do with the people who are at another site. Again it needs to be embedded in the same application, not requiring any plugins or software to be installed, but simply work out of the box within Chrome or Firefox (webmeetings).My understanding of Zimbra is rather limited and I am sure some of them may be available in one shape or other. However, I did stop looking and investigating when I looked at the following webpage:
https://www.zimbra.com/email-server-software/product-edition-comparison/
And realised that most of what I need is either only in the paid editions or even in the paid editions you still have to pay for it (e.g. zimbra talk).
My usage is too limited for me to justify buying a license.
In addition as you say the Kopano application looks a lot slicker at least from the demos and screenshots I have seen of Zimbra.
All the features I have listed above are downloadable for you at the Kopano community site.
Who knows, there may be some teething issues (that I do not have perhaps right now) but I get the entire software and it works for me. I get the entire packages and integration with cloud, web conferencing etc. etc.
I do understand if your needs are different and you are looking for something else.
That's why perhaps there is more than one product on the market to satisfy different needs.
As I said I did look at Zimbra but it is simply lacking the features (at least in the community edition) and I cannot use it. If it did, I'd be very happy to use it.
There may be public domains or whatever plugins to make Zimbra look or have those features, I am not sure, perhaps, but then, I am familiar with Kopano, I'll stick to it.
Is it perfect? no. Is it working? no. Is there a community edition which is the same as the official releases? no.
As I said I do get the mainline branch, test it, and when satisfied it works, I push it to my own production, I.e. I do my own release branches.
At the end, the world isn't perfect.
If you want basic functionalities and that's all you need, then pick Zimbra. The community edition is EXACTLY the same as the paid for one, it works, all great.
however
if you want more advanced featues and you can't live with Zimbra, then unless there are other solutions (and I am happy of course to listen to those) I have only Kopano I can chose from.
It has a LOT of features that I actually NEED on a daily basis.
Yes I have to watch out to use their mainline branch as opposed to official releases, but hey... that's life I suppose.
And SMIME because these days I get bills (e.g. tax bills) delivered encrypted and I need to be able to read them.
Again comes in the Kopano community edition but not Zimbra.
@mcostan
Ah, sorry, and the delayed delivery plugin which is very useful at least to me. It is very simple, but allows me to write emails over the weekend and set the time when they will go out during the week at my preferred time.
Again I am sure useful for me and perhaps not for you.
@scottalanmiller
See my reply separately.
I would advise you to go to www.kopano.com
look at the demo video, the actual product demo, and the products.
Hi, My use is perhaps not the usual user so I do understand if perhaps you do not need any of the following.
I tend to work away from the office quite a lot and I work on desktops which aren't mine, but at the client site, therefore I cannot install anything on their PC.
Therefore I need a fully integrated solution which I can replicate in the same way at home as when I am (mostly the case) on site.
That includes:
a) email of course
b) activesync support for mobile devices (free with z-push). As I have all the mobile phones synced in native protocol. This way I have everything synced on the mobile phones, including tasks, notes, contacts, email etc. etc. Natively.
c) Outlook 2016 support with Exchange integration (not IMAP, but proper activesync) (comes again with z-push). When I go home I use Outlook 2016 and I tend to see that activesync and full integration is a lot better than IMAP.
d) very important for me. Cloud storage integrated with the main webapp application. I can create e-mails from attachments to and from the cloud and when I get back home, my main PC has the files on the cloud itself. It's all integrated in webapp. I have owncloud running and I can see my files everywhere I go, within the application. They are remotely synced on the main server and on the phone when I need.
e) chat (mostly) and videoconferencing which I do with the people who are at another site. Again it needs to be embedded in the same application, not requiring any plugins or software to be installed, but simply work out of the box within Chrome or Firefox (webmeetings).
My understanding of Zimbra is rather limited and I am sure some of them may be available in one shape or other. However, I did stop looking and investigating when I looked at the following webpage:
https://www.zimbra.com/email-server-software/product-edition-comparison/
And realised that most of what I need is either only in the paid editions or even in the paid editions you still have to pay for it (e.g. zimbra talk).
My usage is too limited for me to justify buying a license.
In addition as you say the Kopano application looks a lot slicker at least from the demos and screenshots I have seen of Zimbra.
All the features I have listed above are downloadable for you at the Kopano community site.
Who knows, there may be some teething issues (that I do not have perhaps right now) but I get the entire software and it works for me. I get the entire packages and integration with cloud, web conferencing etc. etc.
I do understand if your needs are different and you are looking for something else.
That's why perhaps there is more than one product on the market to satisfy different needs.
As I said I did look at Zimbra but it is simply lacking the features (at least in the community edition) and I cannot use it. If it did, I'd be very happy to use it.
There may be public domains or whatever plugins to make Zimbra look or have those features, I am not sure, perhaps, but then, I am familiar with Kopano, I'll stick to it.
The community and the product work great for me. I have no idea who Patrick is perhaps a paying user.
I am not a paying user and it works for me