Incoming Email Troubles and Sugar

[moonbeachx]

Hi All,

Excuse me if this is the wrong category, but I think it is acceptable here, and I really believe we need to start a discussion about this, in a populous place.

We have been trying to use Sugar Open Source for 3 months now, and it is futile because incoming email is VERY unreliable. The most it has worked before requiriing an apach recycle is 48 hours, usually its more like every 8 hours, and since we use a shared hosting account, that is not practical.

Per SugarChris ("IMAP absolutely must be working for inbound email to work")
Bottom line what I am saying is that the IMAP library is unreliable. It is not ready for the enterprise. I have found several links that discuss this, including one from a well known PHP "guru" quoted by the likes of Tim O'Reilly (http://radar.oreilly.com/tim/)and Rael Dornfest (http://radar.oreilly.com/rael/)

This "guru" is Jeremy Zwadony and a link to his discussion of IMAP clients is here: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004841.html
Here are some more links
http://www.versiontracker.com/php/fe...05111910262928
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg00872.html
Just look up IMAP Unreliable? on Google....

Now before you say horse****, let me tell you the troubleshooting that I have done to get this working.
1. I have tried ALL the forum suggestions for getting email working reliably.
2. I have installed SugarCRM open source on 3 different shared acounts on three different machines, and 2 different hosting companies,
3. I have purchased a hosting account that comes preinstalled with SugarCRM at another company
4. I have pesterd the sys admin, he has, reinstalled (and switched settings, IMAP, PHP, APACHE, SugarCRM numerous times,)
5. I have opened paid ticket with SugarCRM network. (this is ongoing)

We have considered getting a paid and hosted SugarCRM pro account, but want to be partners of SugarCRM, and believe that if we cant get the open source solution working, then what makes us think we can sell this product to enterprises?

I thought I would write this instead of just saying "SugarCRM email is unreliable, I'm looking for another solution", that I have seen so often here.

Yes, I know some/many of you may have less trouble with inbound then me, but I am also willing to bet (literally 50 Bucks! give me a call) that if a POP3 only solution was implemented many of these problems would go away! (Yes I know there is a POP3 option for income email, but as per SugarChris, IMAP must still be installed and working, since it supplies some critical functions)

Feedback?

[annesugar]

Hi Moon,

You put forward a constructive point in your post.

I have also had problems setting up emails in a shared hosting environment. I have tried several different hosts and none seem to provide the right platform to run Sugar on smoothly. I would be very interested in finding a shared host that could host a fully reliable and working instance of Sugar. Email functionality seems to be a vital feature for many Sugar users in this forum and the hardest to get working.

We are desperately trying to move away from hosting things in house - for a small business we just cannot afford the man hours and disruption to business when servers go down (as they seem to at least twice a week!). I would rather leave the hosting side of things to people who specialise in that field and who are accountable for the up time of the service. Unfortunately it seems the only solution left is to host yourself and have the control over the hosting environment (versions of PHP, imap libraries installed etc etc)

I think your attitude is right.....

"I thought I would write this instead of just saying "SugarCRM email is unreliable, I'm looking for another solution""

...I too would rather help out other peoples problems and contribute where I can rather than pick holes at the first opportunity. I also welcome discussion on the topic.

Thanks,

[moonbeachx]

Hello,

Update from the original poster:. I spent 3 months trying to get SugarCRM installed on shared hosting plans(yes we did EVERYTHING). Mostly with Hostgator.com (sorry gator guys, but its true), and have had very little luck.

To their credit they have tried, and I also went to another cheap shared hosting company (hostforweb) and that failed too.

The main bug is always related to incoming email. No matter what we tried the Check Email button alwas hung, and failed.

The feedback I got from Sugar was, also that they recommended dedicated servers. The issue seems mainly to be with Shared Apache connections, because whenever it fails an Apache Restart usually fixes the problem.

Unfortunately cheap shared hosting solutions usually do not allow you to restart Apache by yourself, and if they did, its still a pain in the butt to have that unreliability.

I recently installed 4.2.0d on a VPS at Liquid Web.com and incoming email using POP3 worked first time out of the gate, and has not failed yet. (I also like Liquid Web, because the technical detail trail is fairly transparent, and I like to know what is going on, instead of just being told "we are working on it"

Just my 2 cents.

moonbeachx
James Jordan
Partner
www.iandiam.com

[awinteck]

I think that the email feature is buggy on purpose and people forget that the same company that puts the open source is also selling the software. The interest to fix it or implement an easier solution may not be there before the demand is there.

I remember we tried to get a sugarcrm quote once. I am not kidding the price and licensing is comparable to microsoft crm product (pricewise) . Just tell me from a common sense perspective why would a company that is selling software that expensive gives out it's good code to the public. It does not add up. Also I believe that a company that has an open source software should not have a paid version of that same software it is straight out flat "CONFLICT OF INTEREST"

Email is the heart of the crm and a vital part of today's communications, I still do not get it why it has to be imap libraries when for there seems to be a pop account setting feature which for some reason requires IMAP.
Please were are in 2008 please do not have people creating cronjob (through shells ) to have email woorking.

If email is that difficult, I am willing to write my own module but first before i spend the time to create it i have to be able to be some kind distributor of sugar.

My intention is to host the crm on my server and when my company grows enough where i can afford to have it hosted i will just have it hosted on sugar's server. It is not worth it to have that much data hosted on your home server .

By the way it seems to be the nature of the business, I have encountered the same issue with another Open source. crms.

Also if anybody is interested on helping me fix my issue (not able to get incoming email) i would really appreciate it.
i will give you root access and i will Also PAY (MONEY) THAT I CAN AFFORD

Note : i have tried everything already,the cron jobs and allt hat jazz.
Here are my specs:
fedora 6
php 2.5
apache 2.2.4