Roundcube is a web-based IMAP email client written in the PHP

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

 programming language. Roundcube's most prominent feature is the pervasive use of Ajax

Ajax (programming)

Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...

 technology to present a more fluid and responsive user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

 than that of traditional webmail clients. After about two years of development, the first stable release of Roundcube was announced in early 2008.

Released under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, Roundcube is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

.

Notable Applications

Roundcube is used by a number of universities to provide email services to students and staff such as Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, UC Berkeley, Stevens Institute of Technology

Stevens Institute of Technology

Stevens Institute of Technology is a technological university located on a campus in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA – founded in 1870 with an 1868 bequest from Edwin A. Stevens. It is known for its engineering, science, and technological management curricula.The institute has produced leading...

, Tilburg University, and the University of Sussex

University of Sussex

The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....

. In an interview in 2009 two of Roundcube's core developers noted that the largest deployment to that date that they were aware of was in the University of Michigan with 70,013 students.

Many hosting companies around the world such as HostGator

HostGator

HostGator is a Houston-based web hosting company with an additional presence in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 2002 by Brent Oxley, who was then a student at Florida Atlantic University. By 2006, HostGator had passed the 200,000 mark in registered domains. In 2008, Inc...

, DreamHost

DreamHost

DreamHost is a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar. It is the web hosting branch of New Dream Network, LLC, founded in 1996 by Dallas Bethune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez and Sage Weil, undergraduate students at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, and...

, Media Temple

Media Temple

Media Temple is a website hosting and software application services company based in Culver City, California, USA. It is a pioneer of "grid hosting", whereby multiple stand-alone servers are linked to provide additional capacity for clients during periods of peak demand...

 or 1blu.de offer Roundcube to their customers.

Roundcube Webmail IMAP client was incorporated into epesiBIM

EpesiBIM

epesiBIM is an open source, web based Customer Relationship Management multiuser application. BIM stands for 'epesi Business Information Manager' with the goal of providing functionality beyond the typical CRM...

 (epesi Business Information Manager)- a web based, open source CRM like application.

Apple's operating system, Mac OS X 10.7, provides Roundcube as the default webmail client in Mail Server. In prior versions SquirrelMail

SquirrelMail

SquirrelMail is an Open Source project that provides both a web-based email application and an IMAP proxy server.The webmail portion of the project was started by Nathan and Luke Ehresman in 1999 and is written in the PHP scripting language...

 is provided by default.

Technology

Roundcube Webmail is designed to run on standard web servers such as Apache

Apache HTTP Server

The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...

 or Lighttpd

Lighttpd

lighttpd is an open-source web server more optimized for speed-critical environments than common products while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible...

 in conjunction with a relational database engine. Supported databases are MySQL

MySQL

MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

, PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...

 and SQLite

SQLite

SQLite is an ACID-compliant embedded relational database management system contained in a relatively small C programming library. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and implements most of the SQL standard...

. The user interface is rendered in XHTML

XHTML

XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....

 and CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...

 and is fully customizable with skins.

jQuery

JQuery

jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It was released in January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig...

 is an integrated part of Roundcube as well as other libraries such as GoogieSpell and TinyMCE

TinyMCE

TinyMCE, also known as the Tiny Moxiecode Content Editor, is a platform-independent web-based JavaScript/HTML WYSIWYG editor control, released as open source software under the LGPL by Moxiecode Systems AB. It has the ability to convert HTML textarea fields or other HTML elements to editor instances...

.

Current Features

• Connects to any IMAPv4 server
• Available in over 60 languages
• Full support for MIME and HTML messages
• Compose Richtext/HTML messages with attachments
• Multiple sender identities
• Threaded message listing
• IDNA support
• Full featured address book based on vCard
  VCard
  vCard is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards are often attached to e-mail messages, but can be exchanged in other ways, such as on the World Wide Web or Instant Messaging...
  
   with group support
• LDAP directory integration for address books
• Find-as-you-type address book integration
• Forwarding messages with attachments
• Built-in caching for fast mailbox access
• Searching messages and contacts
• Spell checking
• Support for external SMTP server
• Support for shared/global folders and IMAP ACLs
• IMAP folder management
• Template system for custom themes

Plugins

With version 0.3 Roundcube introduced a plug-in API

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

 which allows non-standard features to be added without the need to modify the source code. A variety of plug-ins are available from the Plugin Repository.

See also

• Atmail
• Internet Messaging Program
  Internet Messaging Program
  The Internet Messaging Program or IMP is an open source PHP-based webmail client for IMAP. IMP is a component of the Horde project.It is included with cPanel and Plesk installations as a webmail client...
  
  
• SquirrelMail
  SquirrelMail
  SquirrelMail is an Open Source project that provides both a web-based email application and an IMAP proxy server.The webmail portion of the project was started by Nathan and Luke Ehresman in 1999 and is written in the PHP scripting language...
  
  
• BlueMamba
  BlueMamba
  BlueMamba is a webmail system written in PHP. It has support for IMAP and TMDA email systems. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License.- See also :* Comparison of e-mail clients* SquirrelMail* RoundCube* IlohaMail- External links :*...
  
  
• IlohaMail
  IlohaMail
  IlohaMail is a webmail system written in PHP. It has support for both POP3 and IMAP. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License.- See also :* Comparison of e-mail clients* SquirrelMail* RoundCube* BlueMamba...
  
  
• Comparison of e-mail clients
  Comparison of e-mail clients
  The following tables compare general and technical features of a number of email client programs. Please see the individual products articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up to date.-General:...