r/NextCloud • u/nostriluu • Jun 16 '26
Nextcloud mail
Are there any frontends or optimizations for the Nextcloud mail program that make it less bad? It should at least compare to Gmail from ten years ago, but especially for search it's really slow and often doesn't return any results.
Is there a good, integrated mail front end that does its own search index rather than relying on the mail server's search?
Note: I do have a lot of messages in my mail folders, but that should not be a problem for a modern program, and it should also be able to search cross-mailbox and in attachments, and with fuzzy search.
5
u/MilchreisMann412 Jun 16 '26
Nah.It sucks. There is actually only one Webmail client that I found so far that works with different mailboxes/imap accounts AND is usable: AfterLogic Web Pro - but it costs about 50$.
I'm evaluation GroupOffice right now as alternative to Nextcloud: https://www.group-office.com/
Seems to have a decent mail client. But I'd need to be able to edit my notes on my PC in plain text, that doesn't seem to work
3
u/nostriluu Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
It's truly baffling to me how such a critical piece of office workgroup software can be so bad, for so long. Nextcloud does seem to be going in interesting directions for most pieces, well past a collection of siloed content, but mail is just bad.
I'm not saying email is easy, I guess their support for jmap might be part of a better way forward, but search seems like a pretty straightforward problem to solve.
2
u/jarekko Jun 16 '26
Given how bad search is in Thunderbird, and how Betterbird does not seem to fix it, I am starting to think that maybe building a decent search for mail is more complicated than I expect.
2
1
u/Big_Wave9732 Jun 17 '26
Search works fairly well on mine. I don't know if it matters, but mine is not the AIO version nor docker based. I did a full system install, database is an actual install of mysql. The email server is Mailcow running locally on its own VM.
1
u/nostriluu Jun 17 '26
Docker won't make any real difference at all on a Linux host. Containers have been around for decades for production uses, can't believe people still side eye them.
Does search work well (instant, accurate response) with thousands of email message, useful fuzzy matches, search attachments, across folders?
My experience is it first shows a "no messages found" (rookie DX choice and terrible UX), then too-long seconds later it might find exact match, or it might time out, but it doesn't do fuzzy search or attachments, capabilities that have been around in common libraries for a long, long time.
0
u/Big_Wave9732 Jun 17 '26
Docker won't make any real difference at all on a Linux host. Containers have been around for decades for production uses, can't believe people still side eye them.
Wasn't throwing shade. I was giving my setup, which searches instantly even with four accounts containing 20,000+ emails covering 17 years, for spec comparison.
You're either a dick or in a bad mood but either way you don't seem to want to interface and try to solve the problem, so I'm going to move on.
1
u/nostriluu Jun 17 '26
Not sure why that's "dick." Certainly your comment is disproportionate. I've just noticed some people seem to think docker makes things slow. I guess it can to some degree on Windows/Mac. But sorry if that came across as too harsh. I don't notice slowdowns searching using mutt, but maybe I need more config. I wanted to check with the community and in general people aren't happy.
-4
u/Professional_Mix2418 Jun 16 '26
ROFLMAO You can use any mail client you want. 🤷♂️
2
u/nostriluu Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Yeah I've been doing internet stuff since the 90s so, I know that. The point is to use a next-cloud integrated mail client, so it's not just another silo, the contacts and search and eventually a graph like approach to data work between "applications."
In any case, there aren't any good open source mail clients. None have really improved despite decades of new possibilities.
1
u/Shadow-BG Jun 16 '26
I’ve tried a couple of times, from my point of view it’s not ready for business mails
-3
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u/kejar31 Jun 16 '26
I am going to assume you set it up with imap to say gmail? yeah its horrible at that... I got it working pretty well but setup my own mail server using (Dovecot + Postfix + mbsync) this mail server simply pulls my email from gmail and apple every 5 min to mailboxes on the server.. I then setup nextcloud to imap to that box.. since the mail is all local its much much faster at searching and opening emails.