It was never faster then squirrelmail. It had cool features search was fast. But loading up your mailbox never as fast as other solutions.

I was considering things like Hotmail and Yahoo mail to be competitors. Free, ad supported, web based email. Was Squirrelmail that? I don't know I've hardly heard of it.

Squirrelmail is a GNU licensed webmail client. If you get a domain and hosting and they provide webmail for your domain, it's likely through Squirrelmail or one of a handful of competitors