SocketMail Lite Edition

Author: hive2.com

Thanks for your positive review. However, you're wrong with your statements about Hivemail. I wonder how you conclude that it's led by "rogue programmers". They had a steady and not erratic release of updates in the past 3 years. Hivemail in its current state is a serious alternative among the webmail solutions you mentioned.

Author:

Several reviews about SocketMail Lite here complain about buggy software with virtually no support. I almost always defer to reviews when making a significant purchase. After all, I don't wait to stain my reputation with visitors by offering poor service and I don't want to lose $120. However, I took the negative reviews with a grain of salt as they appear mainly around 2003, six years ago. I crossed my fingers, hoping the company had changed, and took the leap. After all, the only alternatives I discovered were 1) Atmail - although nice software, way out of my price range with a per-user charge (up to the thousands) slapped on top of licensing fees, plus extra charges if you wanted any good features; 2) Alstrasoft, a company with nothing good written about it anywhere, with negative reviews plentiful not just in its infant stages but from this month; and 3) Hivemail, an abandoned project seemingly revived by rogue programmers working in erratic spurts, with no checkout system (not too inspiring in terms of support) plus more costly than Alstrasoft and SocketMail. To say the least, I do not regret taking the jump. To start with, I have nothing but good things to say about SocketMail Lite support thus far. My support and feature requests have received responses in less than 24 hours in every case. So far, Mr. Shavim Parikh, the owner, has responded himself to all of my inquiries. He helped me to resolve installation issues I had with the software. SocketMail also now offers Priority Support with a $250 tag, so I can only assume Priority Members would receive even better attention. However, even without this, I can't complain about support. Installation consists of uploading all necessary files to your sites, changing permissions on quite a few files to 777, creating a MySql database, then running the installation script. After you enter in your database name, user, and password, the script takes care of the rest, setting up necessary tables for you. To finish off installation, you basically create the admin account, create storage quotas for email accounts, and add your POP3 catchall account. The SocketMail Lite Manual explains this well. To sum up, pretty much anybody with the skills to register a website can install the script. The admin interface gives you good control over running your website in a simple, easy to understand format. You can add an unlimited number of domains with the press of a button and arrange their priority on the login/registration dropdown as desired. You can also serve advertisements, including banners and forced signatures, with different rates packages. I don't yet know if you can create a purchase page for potential advertisers which would automatically accept payment and set up advertisements. You can create email packages with varying levels of price, advertisements, storage, and more. These packages are added to the registration page for selection and automatically process payment (PayPal accepted) and account creation. Of course, you can view all active accounts, purge unused accounts, and so on. I didn't see an option for SSL but I might have missed this. A quick three lines in your .htaccess file solves this beautifully, anyway. The default Aqua theme user interface is sleek and beautiful. If you can figure out minimal PHP, you can also customize this (or any) theme to meet your needs. The admin interface also has a theme and file editor, but I haven't bothered with it. I simply changed the background and the logo image in the CSS file and now the site truly looks like my own. To further make the site look like my own, I plan to purchase the license to remove the "Copyright SocketMail" notice at the bottom of each page. This license runs $100. I haven't discovered any bugs obvious in the user interface as of yet, and I've given it a thorough thrice-over. According to the logs on the website, it appears that they update frequently to correct bugs, security threats, or just add new features. Since you shoulder a $30 update subscription fee when you purchase the software for $90, you're good with updates for a year. After that, prepare for a $50 yearly update subscription fee. I did have one concern regarding security. To retrieve a lost password, the user answers a security question he/she created at sign-up. Upon correctly answering the question, a new computer-generated replacement password appears. Since a spam-bot could attack the servers with answer guesses until it finally found a correct one, I'd like to see a captcha or other preventative security measure on the form. I relayed my concerns to Mr. Parikh, who said he would add it in version 3.3 or so. Since the programmers are Indian and therefore presumably not native speakers of English, the text on the user interface, while perfectly understandable and free of spelling errors, is occasionally awkward for the discerning English speaker. Of course, I suspect most native speakers would fail to notice these little bumps and, again, if you can figure out minimal PHP, you can easily change the text as you see fit. Another great thing about Lite is that it works on a shared server. All in all, I would recommend this software with any reservations. You can see my running installation at: http://www.faemail.net

Author: Christos Teriakis

I've bought it at the end of 2003. Five full years now and I never used it. Latelly I started operating a site for which I wanted to have webmail. I found in my backups the latest file that I had (I had paid for a year updates more) and I tried to install it. As it asked me for my number I contacted the company to get it. What bad surprise when they told me that, "yes, I can use it for life, but I can't install it after 1 year". Great support for clients who helped them in their first steps.

Author: deno

BAD BAD BAD BAD if you buy from these people don't count on getting any support from them i have been trying to contact them for ages and i get no reply.

Author: Indrit

I have been using socket mail for quite a few months now and I can tell it is a nightmare. No one ever reply to you. Never get a live person. The software is full of bugs and there is no place to seek help. I lost tons of money having socketmail as my email provider. I lost a lot of customer. DO NOT BUY THIS SOFTWARE. NEVER!!!

Author: Shivam

Ive been using Socketmail since a few years now and this is my first and possibly last review. I have been thoroughly happy with their service and support. Earlier what took ages in support is now speedy. They seem to have telephone support (24x7) on request. Their product is nicely priced compared to competitors and has many features that other scripts dont even provide or seem to know about. Overall, I have found this the golden investment that's got our projects flooding with business. Hail !

Author: kyle

This software is full of bad grammer, and incomplete bug ridden code. Being an experienced PHP programmer and certified I installed according to thier manual on a basic shared account. I have had nothing but headaches dealing with support, they offer no help and claim it is 100% user error. Don't buy unless you are experienced.

Author: John C. Hanlon

I purchased SocketMail Light maybe 3 or 4 months ago now, I just had to post a review to say how awsome this software is! I have been running SocketMail Light on my domain with no problems what so ever, the multiple domain compatability is awsome as I will now be rolling out the free email services over a further 8 domains. Way to go SocketMail!

Author: Charles Aqayo

Its a superb piece of software. I took me just about 10 minutes tops to install. The pop and smtp server are simply amazing, just switch on or off from the admin. Now I can offer paid accounts with pop capability. Mailguard is cool. Helpful bunch of guys there if you have any issues, nice and cool guys. I'm happy, I get more than what I wanted.

Author: Alan Steele

After tested the demo site, I decided to purchase. The installation was a breeze and using CPanel, I am able to set the pipe delivery which is working perfectly. The best part is that the functionalities availiable simply beyond my expectation. I can even compress mails when receiving, which mean I can save storage space. Then I bought the wap module, its neat and cool! The support are professional and the forum community are cool. Its a great product after comparing with others.

Author: Salem

its true, I am very happy with this script. its the first time I use it. everything went smoothly in a nice way. Itt neat,well organised and user friendly one. my clients are happy with it. In fact I like the support team. they are very fast and they at their word.I really like the script and I am going to recommand it to my customers.

Author: Mark Dupuis

I purchased socketmail three weeks ago, and have yet been able to receive any help with installation problems. In the future I will purchase on items from the good old USA,where custmer support exist.

Author: Scott

After playing around with socketmail for the last 12 hours I have found it to be better than expected. I had been thinking about buying socketmail for about 3 months always looking but never buying. I am glad I did buy I wish I would have done it when I first found out about it. Anyone thinking of buying but not 100% I think you will be impressed. There are stackes of options to set it up how you would like. Anyway thats my 20c worth. Scott

Author: Mike Simonds

Socketmail is a great product and instantly adds the ability to offer email to your community, just like yahoo or msn. My members love it and the support is just outstanding. This is a must for communities across the web.

Author: Ernie Baca

This is an awsome e-mail client. It has enabled me to offer a service never thought of on a shared hosting system! It is also the only software package of it's kind on the market. I do realize that people have complained about bugs in thier reviews. I have encountered very few bugs and when I have the support is awsome. The owner of this company has personally helped me when I have had problems. I really do feel that the support efforts are next to none! TWO THUMBS UP!!!!!

Author: khairul

The previous comments was true for older version i.e. 2.0. In version 2.0.5 and 2.0.7 and now 2.1 the bugs mentioned pertaining to the installation has been rectified. I believe that SocketMail Lite has lots to offer to the public.

Author:

OK, I thought MS was the only one who released software with mass amounts of bugs. This is a nice script and well structured, just it's going to take some effort to get it up and running. First the install program does not work for a shared server, it will say it does but the data inserted into the database is incorrect. There are many SQL errors. You will need to modify some scripts to point to the include files directly. You will need to setup a cron job to delete the inbox.lock file that is created when SocketMail checks the catch-all address, why? because your email sever will not be able to receive emails otherwise. Getting support from the developer is non-existant. If your an expeirenced PHP programmer I suggest this as a good starting point, you get the full source so fixing it is no problem and it is only $79USD.