Resolved Future of Horde support

[pmg]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 22.04

Plesk version and microupdate number

Plesk Obsidian 18.0.63 Update #3

Hi there!
What are the future plans for a Horde groupware support and what is the best practice around webmail in Plesk?
My concerns are:
- Horde haven't had stable releases in 4 years
- Plesk requires PHP7.4 (outdated) to install Horde
- No mentions of Horde on Plesk' deprecation plan

Thanks!

 

[Maarten]

The Horde Webmail project is still active but appears to be in a somewhat static state.

There is a bug in Horde Webmail 5.2.22 that still hasn't been fixed:

Horde Webmail 5.2.22 - Account Takeover via Email

We recently discovered a code vulnerability in Horde Webmail that can be used by attackers to take over email accounts by sending a malicious email.

www.sonarsource.com

So, my advice should be to switch to Roundcube and disable Horde Webmail on your server.

Sebahat.hadzhi I guess Plesk should give an official announcement on this.

 

[pmg]

Thanks for the insight, @Maarten. !

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

As far as I am aware we have been considering deprecating Horde for some time. @AYamshanov will provide more details on this matter in the upcoming days.

 

[AYamshanov]

Hi guys,

Thank you for the question, @pmg!

Right, in the 2023 year, we collected some numbers related to Horde Webmail to decide what we need to do with it (exactly because of the reasons explained in the first post of the thread). Based on the numbers, we decided to wait a while to see trends and check will something changed with Horde for that time or not.

Recently, we have checked the numbers one more time and I can say that the popularity of Horde is declining over time.

- No mentions of Horde on Plesk' deprecation plan

This is not an easy task, since a significant part of the servers continues to use Horde. We still are considering updating the deprecating plan. If/when decide to do that, it also will be announced in the Plesk Change Log. To this information, I can only add that in any case, we will give users enough time (a few months) to move to another webmail if decide to deprecate Horde.

[...] what is the best practice around webmail in Plesk?

Plesk for Linux, like Plesk for Windows, supports different webmail clients. Since the question is asked in the section "Plesk Obsidian for Linux", I would recommend taking a look at Roundcube and the SOGo Webmail extension as a free alternative to Horde. As you can see in Plesk Changelog, both solutions are updated regularly and supported by Plesk. It is also possible to configure different webmails for different domains at the same time, there is no requirement to choose only one solution for the whole server.

 

[pmg]

Thanks, @AYamshanov! So for the sake of those who just considering Horde I can conclude that official advice is NOT taking this route, right?

 

[AYamshanov]

@pmg, right, now it is official: Feature Deprecation Plan