Socialtext (discontinued) vs. Zimbra Email & Collaboration

We use Social Text as a platform to air our issues with different departments. We voice our concerns and suggestions so we can help find a solution to the problems we incur on a daily basis. We need to have social text as an app so we can communicate in real time not only during work hours.

Zimbra is great for an email system for a medium or large organization with appropriate IT staffing. The system is easy to use for end-users, and has a fantastic web interface. Unfortunately, it is overly complex, when considering staffing requirements and price, when compared with Office 365 or Google Apps for smaller organizations. For other education customers, it is hard to compete with Microsoft and Google providing their services for "Free" now though

Incentivized

• Version history - Always keeps the edited versions and one can revert back any time
• Creating and Editing an article is very easy and intutive
• Sharing the articles with peers

• Filter emails with specific information required.
• Very good storage capacity.
• Has a mobile version and another web.
• It has a friendly and modern graphic interface.
• It is compatible with all operating systems.

• Search needs a ton of improvements. It was very slow a year ago
• Search result quality was also not that good
• I know they have improved their UI recently but when i used it last year it did not really have any design elements which could be used to make the articles look more presentable. It was important for us as we used it for external communication as well.

• The password change is not activated when you access by IMAP, Pop3 or Exchange sync. You have to know that the password change is required and you must go to the website to do so.
• The management of mail rules should have more checking options.
• There should be more applications compatible with Zimbra, the ones that appear in the Zimlets.

Incentivized

We have a lot of info in Socialtext already. It would be hard to get all that info out and port it to a different system

Overall, we were satisfied with the implementation. We perhaps should have spent more time consulting with Zimbra or others regarding best practices but as we got to know the system better we were able to make changes relatively easily after the fact.

Incentivized

I frankly like Confluence better than socialtext because of the speed and the quality of search. They also have better design elements which can help make the articles pleasant to the eyes.

We selected Zimbra because it has a lower cost in the market, offers more development features for its open source, has a very easy to use interface and adjusts to the needs of the company.

Incentivized

• We get solutions to concerns much faster
• We promote interactions with the other depts
• We listen and have discussions

• Since all of our ROI studies and strategies are performed at the corporate level, I'm really not sure what positive or negative impacts Zimbra has had on our overall business objectives. I can say that at least one positive impact it has on my business objectives, in the medical record department, is the ability to be as paperless as possible.

Incentivized