Amazon WorkMail vs Zimbra Collaboration comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Zimbra are both solutions in the Email Applications category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while Zimbra is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 9.0% mindshare in EA, compared to Zimbra’s 8.0% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Zimbra users who would recommend it.

Amazon WorkMail

Read 13 Amazon WorkMail reviews

3,105 Views
2,577 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Zimbra Collaboration

Read 29 Zimbra Collaboration reviews

2,311 Views
2,195 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Amazon WorkMail

Zimbra Collaboration

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

Zimbra Collaboration and Amazon WorkMail compete in enterprise email and collaboration solutions. Zimbra Collaboration excels in pricing and support, while Amazon WorkMail is favored for its features, making its higher pricing justified for many.

Features: Zimbra Collaboration provides email, chat, calendar integration, and open-source flexibility for customization. Amazon WorkMail offers seamless AWS integration, robust security, and compliance features. The security and cloud integration of Amazon WorkMail are notable advantages over Zimbra Collaboration's customizable environment.

Room for Improvement: Zimbra Collaboration could enhance its integration with third-party apps, improve user interface design, and strengthen security features. Amazon WorkMail may benefit from greater customization options, enhanced offline capabilities, and improved user training materials.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zimbra Collaboration offers flexible deployment for varied IT environments with strong customer support. Amazon WorkMail excels with AWS infrastructure, simplifying integration and scalability while providing extensive documentation. Leveraging AWS's support ecosystem, Amazon WorkMail has a deployment advantage, but Zimbra's flexibility suits specific configurations.

Pricing and ROI: Zimbra Collaboration, with its lower initial setup cost, presents a compelling ROI for budget-conscious organizations seeking feature-rich solutions. Amazon WorkMail, though more costly, is valued for its integration capabilities and security, often leading to greater long-term benefits. Zimbra Collaboration's initial cost-effectiveness is clear, yet Amazon WorkMail might deliver better long-term value for businesses focused on security and integration.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon WorkMail vs. Zimbra Collaboration Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail vs. Zimbra Collaboration

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon WorkMail

Ranking in Email Applications

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Email (3rd)

Zimbra Collaboration

Ranking in Email Applications

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Email Applications category, the mindshare of Amazon WorkMail is 9.0%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zimbra Collaboration is 8.0%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Applications Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon WorkMail	9.0%
Zimbra Collaboration	8.0%
Other	83.0%

Email Applications

Featured Reviews

Ramkumar Kolpurath

Co-Founder & CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Seamless email communication improves cost-effectiveness and security with valuable tracking features

The features of Amazon WorkMail that I have found the most valuable so far include sending emails and tracking whether the email is read or not. I find the feature that checks how many emails have been successfully sent and how many of them have been opened very useful, because in our application, we know the usage of the emails. The encryption of emails, both in transit and at rest, has benefited our security strategy as it is a layer of security that provides us better confidence for customers and also internally tracks the security aspects. The encryption meets my expectations.

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Muhammad Talha Baig

Business Analyst and Associate Project Manager at SAMI Pharmaceuticals

One of the premium features was customized rooms tailored to the collaboration needs

Zimbra's strength lies in its individuality, and it should focus on leveraging its unique features rather than trying to emulate competitors. My organization has certified Zimbra technicians, so we believe we can utilize Zimbra certification. However, I was recently informed by Zimbra that no such certification exists. I have recently completed the test kit, and after the training, I will gain access to tickets. Therefore, if any clients are experiencing issues, we have a certified technical team available to provide support 24/7. This is how we can cater to our client's needs. I recommend Zimbra to small-scale and enterprise customers. Anyone, even those with 5 users, can opt for Zimbra. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It is highly available and scalable. It is also highly reliable. I don't lose any of the messages or emails. If there is an issue where the email sent operation failed, Amazon as a platform ensures that the send operation is retried, and the email reaches its destination. This way, it is highly reliable."

"Amazon WorkMail integrates with Route 53 and other AWS services, providing a seamless experience when using AWS infrastructure."

"Amazon SES is very easy to configure."

"Amazon SES can handle a high volume of emails, making it suitable for organizations with large email lists or that need to send a large number of emails on a regular basis."

"The product is very user-friendly."

"The most valuable thing is that emails sent through SES have a delivery rate of greater than ninety percent."

"It is very stable. I haven't faced any issues."

"There is no need for me to set up security."

More Amazon WorkMail pros

"The web interface is powerful and easy to use."

"The most valuable feature of Zimbra Collaboration is the cost."

"We can control all the data in my IT infrastructure."

"Zimbra Collaboration's sharing features are most valuable."

"A lot of other products like Microsoft Exchange offer email or collaboration features, but they are not as fast as Zimbra."

"The solution is easy to implement."

"The most valuable feature is sending messages as well as text and documents. It's a big solution for us since internal communication is a must in our organization."

"Zimbra Collaboration's best feature is its compatibility with Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol, which allows users to use Outlook on Windows or MacOS."

More Zimbra Collaboration pros

Cons

"Email service is definitely a requirement from an enterprise standpoint. Many organizations have their own on-premise email services, which take a lot of memory, backup, and other resources. If we can have a completely managed backup solution where we have a tiered backup or a tiered archival to be able to retrieve emails, it would be great. I would like to be able to retrieve emails in real-time (hot retrieval), over the 90-days period (warm retrieval), and over the one-year period (cold retrieval). It would be useful to have tiered backup and retrieval. It would help us in managing emails better and have a better backup solution. So, backup is something that we require."

"WorkMail is not available in all the regions."

"There is room for improvement in the support. It's just that customer support, though good, takes time to resolve issues."

"The only issue is the price, which is far too expensive."

"The product should improve technical support."

"Amazon WorkMail's user interface could be more intuitive and user-friendly."

"It would be ideal to have detailed data and reporting on email opens, clicks, bounces, and other metrics, as well as integration with other business intelligence tools."

"The solution is quite low-level and lacks some advanced features. For example, it doesn't provide tracking capabilities, such as knowing how many users opened an email, which is crucial for email marketing. You would need to integrate these analytics with other tools to get them. I need to know if there has been a bounce and how customers interacted with the email."

More Amazon WorkMail cons

"They should enhance its online meeting features."

"We have had an issue with security."

"The tool should improve its multi-cloud feature."

"Zimbra Collaboration could improve the migration from a basic solution to a more containerized solution. For example, the installation should be able to extend to the containers and manage them with some solution, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes."

"The new patches are, at times, not so good, so we don't install them, causing the tool to be not so stable overall."

"Some issues cause the solution not to function correctly or to cause downtime once a month."

"Zimbra must improve its solution to make it easy so that the users don't have to use webmail to connect to their accounts and log in to webmail every time. This is something that is lacking in Zimbra Collaboration. They should provide a better way to easily connect email applications on the desktop to the Zimbra server. They should also try to have more functionality for storage management, like Microsoft Exchange. Currently, the management of the email data must be done manually in Zimbra Collaboration, which we are finding very difficult. They should provide a way to save emails so that you can have more space on the server and storage. Because of the lack of this functionality, we are planning to migrate to Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft Exchange provides a better way to manage storage than Zimbra Collaboration. You cannot have a mail solution without storage management because emails will always increase. Zimbra Collaboration also needs tools for management. More back-office tools are required to manage the whole mailbox and space. You don't only manage emails but also the documents attached to the emails. Therefore, you require tools to select and decide what do you want to save or how do you want to free up space in your infrastructure."

"The solution’s forums don't have much information or documentation on administration tasks."

More Zimbra Collaboration cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution should improve its price."

"WorkMail does require a license, it is, per user."

"I rate the solution's pricing as one out of ten. It is close to being cheap. Sometimes, the tool offers a generous amount of free messages, up to 40,000, which is great for startups like ours. This means that we don't accumulate any costs for some months because we stay within the free usage tier. When we exceed the free allocation, the costs are reasonable, and no hidden charges exist."

"It's very cheap. The cheapest among all the services available."

"Zimbra Collaboration offers a good price-to-feature ratio."

"The solution is not expensive compared to other products."

"It's very expensive. When we compare the cost with Google Workspace, it's so expensive."

"We are using perpetual licenses. We have deployed it in our local data center, and we buy perpetual licenses on a per-user basis."

"There is an annual standard licensing fee to use Zimbra Collaboration and there is no other cost."

"When it comes to the licensing of Zimbra Collaboration, my license covers the servers and I find its terms to be much simpler than those of Microsoft Exchange."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the price a four"

"The price of the solution is low."

More Zimbra Collaboration pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

University

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon WorkMail?

We use the tool for transactional emails and marketing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon WorkMail?

We are satisfied with Amazon WorkMail, as it is able to send emails and provide receipts, including the read and other statuses. Since we are doing more API side integrations, there does not seem t...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon WorkMail?

From the communication aspects, working with Amazon WorkMail has been seamless and cost-effective. My customers do not make any use of Amazon WorkMail's compatibility with Microsoft Active Director...

See all answers

How does Zimbra Collaboration compare with Microsoft Exchange?

Zimbra is a free, open source collaborative software suite. The features I like best are the ease of integration and the email, calendar, and collaboration server with web interface. In addition, I...

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What do you like most about Zimbra Collaboration?

The most valuable feature of Zimbra for our team's productivity is its efficiency in handling email communication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zimbra Collaboration?

The solution is competitively priced.

See all answers

Comparisons

Google Workspace vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 75% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 15% of the time

ProtonMail vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 4% of the time

SendGrid vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 2% of the time

Brevo vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 2% of the time

More Amazon WorkMail Competitors

Microsoft Exchange vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 24% of the time

Open-Xchange vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 22% of the time

KerioConnect vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 9% of the time

IceWarp vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 9% of the time

More Zimbra Collaboration Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail

October 2025

Download Amazon WorkMail product report

Buyer's Guide

Zimbra Collaboration

September 2025

Download Zimbra Collaboration product report

Also Known As

Amazon SES

No data available

Overview

Amazon WorkMail is a secure, managed business email and calendar service with support for existing desktop and mobile email client applications. Amazon WorkMail gives users the ability to seamlessly access their email, contacts, and calendars using the client application of their choice, including Microsoft Outlook, native iOS and Android email applications, any client application supporting the IMAP protocol, or directly through a web browser. You can integrate Amazon WorkMail with your existing corporate directory, use email journaling to meet compliance requirements, and control both the keys that encrypt your data and the location in which your data is stored. You can also set up interoperability with Microsoft Exchange Server, and programmatically manage users, groups, and resources using the Amazon WorkMail SDK.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Zimbra Collaboration provides administrators and their end users innovative features that solve the challenges faced by organizations using today's legacy communications infrastructure.

Zimbra

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

NEC Biglobe, City of Ventura, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Hola Publishing, BIG, Sleepwell, LaFayette College, Xmission, DNA, Ring Line, Future Group, TIGC

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail vs. Zimbra Collaboration

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon WorkMail vs. Zimbra Collaboration

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