• VentureBeat, Friday, March 6, 2009 11:31 AM

Zimbra, the Yahoo-owned email and business software provider, announced on Thursday that it has crossed the 40 million user mark, which VentureBeat notes is no small achievement for a company that charges for email (most of its customers are corporations). In fact, according to comScore, Zimbra actually has more monthly unique visitors than Google's Gmail: 31.4 million to Gmail's 31.2 million.

VB's Anthony Ha notes that comparing a consumer-driven Web mail product like Gmail to a more business-oriented product like Zimbra is a bit of "an apples to oranges" comparison, but Zimbra's surging popularity is impressive, nonetheless (last year, it reported less than 12 million paid mailboxes). Ha also points out that much of Zimbra's growth came from a landmark deal it struck with Comcast in 2007. A spokeswoman said the deals with Comcast and other service providers "represent a large number of Zimbra's user base."

Zimbra could figure to be a very important product to Yahoo in the coming years and months. As CEO Carol Bartz said recently, email is becoming "increasingly critical" to struggling Yahoo.

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