Google has added IMAP for Gmail. Starting 26 Oct, IMAP will be rolled out
to Gmail accounts. IMAP will also be available for Google Apps.


While we did not mind paying 5-10 $ a year for IMAP service,
Google has provided this service for free. Muchos gracias.

Users are having some questions about the functioning of IMAP on Gmail,
hopefully these issues will be ironed out in the coming months.

For queries on implementation of IMAP, head to Gmail Help Discussion.

A brief review of why IMAP is better than POP

IMAP

POP
Can view just message headers, and then choose which messages to download Have to download all messages at once
Can delete/move a message without having to download it Have to download all messages
Can download just text body of a message Have to download entire message (including any large attachments)
Can view messages in all folders Can only download messages from Inbox
Can access messages both at home/work, and on the road through the web interface Once downloaded, can only access messages at home/work

*

If you prefer using IMAP, just not with Gmail, then head over to fastmail.
Been using their email service for 2 years+ and it is now my primary account.
Excellent implementation of IMAP, is fast and just works.

 

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=75725

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/24/0249257

http://digg.com/software/Gmail_gets_IMAP

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/10/24/gmail-goes-imap-finally

http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/10/imap
 

This page was setup for this petition.

More information:
IMAP is already the most requested feature for gmail.
Brin gave an interview on eWeek in late April 2004 about gmail (and details about IMAP)


                                                    Mailblocks, Fastmail and IMAP

I signed up with mailblocks.com in early 2003. Mailblocks closed its doors in Nov, 05. Mailblocks cut down on the amount of spam I got and it introduced me to IMAP. Until then, I had no clue about IMAP and its benefits. It's sad to see Mailblocks closing its doors but it lost relevancy after AOL acquired it.

After mucking around and reading reviews of various email providers for a few months, I hesitatingly settled on fastmail.net (fastmail.fm.) The space and features were good but the monthly bandwidth limit concerned me. For a 600MB mailbox, a 300MB bandwidth limit a month seemed inadequate. I thought fastmail does seem to have a good reputation among its users and so signed up. After a year of use, my bandwidth usage is usually only 50MB per month, therefore 300MB bandwidth is more than enough. Alongwith the 300MB, you also get an additional 600MB bandwidth that can be utilized anytime.

Signup was fast and easy. The biggest problem is choosing a domain name(right column). (http://www.fastmail.net/docs/faqparts/General.htm#OtherDomains). There are so many domain names to choose from, you can become bogged down trying to select the most suitable one. I use fastmail.net as my primary domain.

There are 4 types of accounts, Guest, Member, Full and Enhanced. The Guest account is free. The member account has a one time cost of 14.95 $ for a lifetime account. I signed up for the 600MB "Full" account. 19.95 $ a year. With the Full account, you now get 6 aliases. My main account is xxxxxx@fastmail.net. You can also choose from a variety of other domains(right column.)

One of the reasons people liked mailblocks was because it was fast(before aol acquired it.) Pages loaded fast, all actions were completed quickly even when you were on a dialup connection. Fastmail is one up on mailblocks. It is even faster than what mailblocks ever was.

Once you login to your fastmail account, the screen can look a little cluttered but you soon get used to it. Unread mails have their first two lines displayed in the inbox.

If you already have an IMAP account and want to migrate all your mail from that account to fastmail, in the Options section, there is a "Migrate IMAP Mailbox" tab that allows you do so. Quite convenient but I didn't utilize this facility. I did a simple select and move in my email client from my older IMAP folders to fastmail.

If you have a large Address book, you can upload it to the fastmail address book from these formats:

Outlook Express CSV export
Outlook CSV export
Eudora CSV export
LDIF (Mozilla/NS7/NS6/NS4 export)
vCard (Pine/OS X Mail export)
Yahoo! CSV
Generic CSV/Tab delim with header line

If you want to save your Address book to your computer, you can do so in 5 formats as well.
Quite convenient but again, I don't utilize this facility much(I prefer my email client for that).

Now that you have an account and have migrated your mail to it, you can set your IMAP settings in your email client(http://www.fastmail.net/docs/faqparts/ExternalMail.htm)

Fastmail's settings are pretty much similar to regular IMAP clients. You have to specify the Root folder path in your email client.

Server: mail.messagingengine.com
Port: 143 (or SSL IMAP port 993)
Username: your FastMail.FM username/login name/email address (must include @fastmail.fm part)
Password: your FastMail.FM password
Root folder/path: inbox
Folder separator: . (fullstop)

In fastmail, you can create 6 aliases and this is useful if you want to keep your business email address separate from your personal one. You can also host your own domain at fastmail in the enhanced account.

You get 30MB of file storage in the Full account and access them on the web through xxxxx.fastmail.net

If you have a hotmail or other POP account, you can retrieve your email from that account to your fastmail account. There's a limit of 10 accounts you can retrieve mail from(more than enough.)

Spam: I didn't know that fastmail ran a spam filter until I had already used fastmail for 6 months. I've had my fastmail account for some 2 years now and have received maybe 1-2 spams a week. My gmail account receives 2-4 spams a week. For those who were used to mailblocks whitelisting, fastmail allows you to do that too.



Personalities: Fastmail allows you to send mail and make it appear that it comes from a different address.

"For instance, you can setup a 'Work' personality and an 'ISP' personality, and send email and make it appear to come from those addresses. Note that any replies WILL be sent to those addresses, rather than your account here, so you will have to read any responses on the appropriate systems.
Each personality also allows you to choose a particular Sent Items folder and a Signature to add. This way you can keep all email you send as 'Work' separate to your other email if you want, and included a different signature on the sent emails as well."
Nice feature, but I don't utilize it much. Aliases work well.

For incoming mail, you can setup filters and rules to sort out your mail. You can also forward your mail to a different email address. The level of customization is quite high and quite flexible.
One of the best features is unlimited subdomain email addresses. If you subscribe to a suspect mailing list or buy a product from a company, you can use xxxxx@suspect.fastmail.net and all mail is delivered to your mailbox or a seperate folder(if you set it up as so.) This means you can instantly see where your spam is coming from and block it.

The time that I have been using Fastmail, I have been pleased with its features and speed. There has been no downtime unlike mailblocks.

If you are looking for a reliable IMAP mail provider, Fastmail is a very good and affordable solution. There are others but from a price perspective and features offered, Fastmail comes out on top.

SushilK

  
 

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