Zimbra Desktop Is Just Plain Awesome

It’s rare these days when I come across any app that makes me say, "Wow, now this is useful!" Yahoo’s Zimbra Desktop is one of them.

When it comes to email, there are many who prefer the convenience of web-based mail but wish there was a local application that looked and acted like a mail client. Zimbra Desktop is it. This software absolutely nails it in terms of friendliness, ease-of-use, convenience and everything in between.

First of all, it’s multi-platform. Windows, Mac or Linux. Any truly good application these days supports all three, and this does.

Second, it has support for multiple types of email:

Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Mail, two types of IMAP and POP.

It always pleases me when I see an offering by a major player like Yahoo! that is willing to support a competitor’s product like Hotmail or Gmail because it shows confidence in their own offering.

It should be noted however that only some Hotmail accounts are supported due to compatibility issues. Most will be, but if yours doesn’t connect, the software will explain why.

Third, look at this interface:

Slim, clean and super-easy. Look at the tabs on top. Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Documents and so on are all just a single click away. Folder support is easy too.

Oh, and speaking of which, did you ever want your Gmail account to have accessible "normal" folders like all other webmail does? It will when you use Zimbra. Simply add a folder via a connected Gmail account, and it will create nested folders that look and act just like normal ones – and yes they’re completely accessible via the regular Gmail interface as well.

Fourth, although this sounds a bit dopey I really dig it – a mail indicator icon in the taskbar in Windows when new mail arrives:

The yellow envelope is the new mail indicator. This seemingly insignificant feature is just so nice to have.

Fifth, yes it has multiple account support. In the screen shot above, look on the left sidebar. Your other accounts are listed at the bottom and can be accessed easily with a single click. If there is any new mail in accounts lists there, there is a small number in parentheses telling you how much new mail there is.

Sixth is the synchronization features. Using Yahoo Calendar and Contacts? It will sync seamlessly. Using Gmail’s version? It’ll sync that too.

It goes without saying that Yahoo! Mail users will appreciate Zimbra the most because it FINALLY brings a true native client to the desktop. This is Yahoo’s equivalent of Windows Live Mail and it does a fine job even though it’s beta software.

And yes, it’s beta. That means some things may go buggy from time to time. But in my use of it I’ve encountered no issues as of yet.

The way Zimbra works in Windows is by installing itself as a service. You will see a small red icon in your taskbar (when no new mail is present) like this:

This is not a bad thing whatsoever, because when the Zimbra client is minimized, it goes completely out of the way and shrinks to this little icon, which can be clicked to bring the client back up. In addition, it can be right-clicked to completely shut down the service.

Zimbra Desktop was definitely done right the first time. It is the only software I’ve seen that offers a true alternative to Windows Live Mail (especially if you don’t use Hotmail) and the feature set is just plain great.

Oh, one last note. This may be a frilly feature but still worth mentioning. It has 12 different themes you can use:

This is available via the Options tab.

Let’s say for example you want Zimbra to look like Gmail. You would choose "Zmail." This is what it looks like:

Looks pretty close to Gmail, doesn’t it?

Zimbra’s dev team really thought this product through.

As said at the top of this article, this is a product that accesses web-based mail but still retains the total look and feel of a local mail client – and has the very-super-awesome-cool sync features like Windows Live Mail does, so it isn’t an island unto itself whatsoever.

Two huge thumbs up for Zimbra Desktop. You’d be very hard pressed not to like this.

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Kyle Potts
Wow great find Rich! Even on Linux the install is in a .sh script. I had no problem installing it even though its not in the arch Linux repository.
Aaron Fournier
This is pretty cool! I’ll have to check this out. I like the ability of it minimizing to the taskbar as well, but I feel doubtful it will do the same thing in Linux. Looking through the FAQ of Zimbra, it makes mention how hitting the “x” button in the upper right corner will minimize it to the taskbar in Windows, but doing the same thing will close it in Mac and Linux. If I can’t minimize it to the taskbar, I don’t see any reason to use it over Mozilla Thunderbird or even Evolution (mainly because Evolution integrates with Ubuntu’s notification system).
http://Zimbra.com John Robb
Thanks Rich for the feedback. Zimbra Desktop is GA against a Zimbra server and we are leaving it Beta against Yahoo!, Gmail, etc.
Vic
Looks great but I have the same question I ask all integrators… Can you protect your multiple accounts with a password for each? Lemme explain… I like having all my gmail, yahoo and hotmail accounts accessible under one roof, but if for some mundane reason I need someone to access one of the accounts, I don’t necessarily want that person to be able to access all of the accounts. A simple optional password protection would do the trick, but I have not yet found a single integrator with this option…
kjv1611
To Vic about integration options:
In Windows, create separate user accounts. Then within each account, have a separate instance of the mail application – whichever application it is. Each user account should be able to customize their use of any application – the changes are stored under Local Settings/AppData typically.
Then you customize which accounts show for that user. The reason why the applications don’t provide such a password “feature” is because it is not convenient at all. You’d end up doing about the same as accessing each account separately.
So, the best way to handle this is simply – different user accounts if on the same PC. If any application was built with the intention of being used by several users on the same user account, same PC, then that’d be a step in the wrong direction, security-wise. You’ll find this is the case at the OS level, whether you’re dealing with Windows, Mac, or Linux. It’s a fundamental of security, really.
So, go create some Windows User Accounts, customize for each account, and you’re done.
http://monkey-house.ca Greg
Looks like it might almost be time to switch from Thunderbird. I should at least give it a try.
What I like is the sync features. I don’t like my calendar being tied to a local machine (as it is with Lightning unless I”m missing something…) so I tend to use Yahoo or Gmail (a bit of a mesh of the two to be honest). If this also consolidates the calendars to one, that’d be enormously useful to me.
It’s a “must try” if nothing else!
Rendfield
With Zimbra you are not able to use multiple email accounts in one folder structure (one sent-box, one address book, one postbox etc.).
It acts as if you have a diffrent program for each email acount.
Each account has its own sent-box, address-book and so on.
Not usable for me in this way.
Outlook and thunderbird could do this easily.
If zimbra would be able to collect my emails from different accounts in one box, I would use it.