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 8.5, while Zimbra is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 9.5% mindshare in EA, compared to Zimbra’s 8.6% mindshare. Additionally, 84% 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 12 Amazon WorkMail reviews

3,018 Views
2,297 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Zimbra Collaboration

Read 29 Zimbra Collaboration reviews

2,646 Views
1,809 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail vs. Zimbra Collaboration

June 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

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Email (2nd)

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 June 2025, in the Email Applications category, the mindshare of Amazon WorkMail is 9.5%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zimbra Collaboration is 8.6%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Applications

Featured Reviews

Michael Olayemi

Senior Software Engineer at Checkit

Provides free messages and helps to keep customers updated

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. I would only suggest that Amazon WorkMail relax the rules for using Amazon SES in production. When you create an account, it starts in Sandbox mode, which means you can't use it in production right away. You must go through a process, message Amazon, and request to move it to production. Since Amazon is a big company, I feel customers shouldn't need this permission to use the service in production.

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Vidya Shree

CTO at Molecular Connections Private Limited

Deploys quickly and has a good web interface

Zimbra Collaboration has a good web interface When it comes to administration tasks like configuring specific filters or group signatures, I have to dig into the configuration since there's nothing in the graphical or web interface. The solution’s forums don't have much information or…

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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

"The best feature is that Amazon SES provides verified email messages."

"Amazon SES is very easy to configure."

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

"The product is very user-friendly."

"We use the tool for transactional emails and marketing."

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

"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."

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

More Amazon WorkMail pros

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

"The logs, troubleshooting, and tracking we have found to be the most valuable features. We have any issues with lost messages the features are useful. It is very easy to track and log."

"Network NG Modules are valuable to us."

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

"Zimbra Collaboration is a good tool for video calls...Zimbra Collaboration's initial setup phase was easy."

"The solution is easy to implement."

"One of the most valuable features involves the solution's automatic backup, which I find to be pretty simple and straightforward, and obviates the need for additional software."

"It has all collaboration features, such as document sharing, video conferencing, chatting, task sharing, and calendar sharing."

More Zimbra Collaboration pros

Cons

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

"There is room for improvement in the scalability."

"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."

"The product should improve technical support."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More Amazon WorkMail cons

"The solution could improve by making it easier to use."

"It does have a few bugs."

"It would be great if a group chat feature were created to allow for a team environment."

"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 installation is not straightforward, it can take two days for the full implementation."

"In the next release, Zimbra Collaboration should include a security feature to allow access for mobile device administrators."

"The antispam and antivirus features are hard to understand on mobile devices."

"The support was lacking in my experience. However, recently the support I received was good. Perhaps they have improved."

More Zimbra Collaboration cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution should improve its price."

"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."

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

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

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

"Zimbra Collaboration is less expensive than Microsoft Exchange. Zimbra works for small companies because it is not expensive. Zimbra Collaboration has more security tools than Microsoft Exchange. If you are choosing between Zimbra Collaboration and Microsoft Exchange, you have to take into account the cost of security tools with Microsoft Exchange. When you purchase Microsoft Exchange, you will also have to purchase tools for security, which adds to the cost. The migration from Zimbra Collaboration to another email solution is very simple and easy. Migration from Microsoft Exchange to another email solution is very difficult. Microsoft doesn't allow migration that easily. In fact, you have to pay for tools to do that. You have to buy some expensive tools to migrate."

"The solution is competitively priced."

"If you choose the network edition, it is a little pricier. They have the open-source edition too which is only community supported."

"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."

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

"Zimbra Collaboration is expensive, and there is no perpetual license option."

More Zimbra Collaboration pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

University

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

Amazon WorkMail's user interface could be more intuitive and user-friendly. Integration with Gmail using both SMTP and POP3 would be beneficial.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon WorkMail?

Currently, I don't have any advice about using Amazon WorkMail. Since I only use AWS and am unfamiliar with its competitors, I can't recommend it.

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 76% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 14% of the time

ProtonMail vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 2% of the time

SendGrid vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 2% of the time

MailChimp vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 1% of the time

More Amazon WorkMail Competitors

Microsoft Exchange vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 27% of the time

Open-Xchange vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 21% of the time

KerioConnect vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 15% of the time

IceWarp vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online vs Zimbra Collaboration

Compared 6% of the time

More Zimbra Collaboration Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail

June 2025

Download Amazon WorkMail product report

Buyer's Guide

Zimbra Collaboration

May 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

June 2025

Free Report: Amazon WorkMail vs. Zimbra Collaboration

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon WorkMail vs. Zimbra Collaboration and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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