Big Wraps for IMAP (and tuffmail)
Not long ago Mail.app guru Joe Kissell was talking up 
the virtues of IMAP for email.
Now PC World has a post on the advantages of IMAP over POP as the protocol that should be handling your email.
It points out the gains of having email stored on a remote server, especially if you move around or need to access the same email at home and at work (or anywhere else). Storing your email remotely also allows you the freedom to use different email clients—Thunderbird on a PC at work, Mail.app on the Mac at home or whatever.
Needless to say it is also nice to have the security of remote storage. Whatever happens to my MacBook Pro or its harddrive, I know my mail is safe.
For example, deleting the settings for a POP account in Mail can delete all the messages stored in that account’s local folders. When they are gone, they are really gone. With IMAP, I know that can never happen. I just download them again into Mail.app’s local cache. That’s saved my bacon a few times.
Of course, you need to have the IMAP option in order to use it. Many ISPs still don’t offer it. I have been a long-time and very happy Fastmail user.
Geir at codehaus has just jumped from POP to IMAP. He gives tuffmail (another specialised email service provider) a glowing review.
A quick glance at the features tuffmail offers (cf. Fastmail’s features ), suggests that it is more flexible and more expensive than Fastmail.
You can build your own package with the mailboxes, storage and features that you need. It offers Roundcube as an interface for its webmail service. On the other hand, you don’t get the WebDAV disk that an enhanced Fastmail account offers.
No doubt there are other providers with IMAP offerings just as rich and useful. It’s the best USD 40 that I spend each year.
In return I get an utterly dependable, first-class IMAP service. If only all the things to which I am addicted were that cheap!
Tags: Apple Mail, fastmail, imap, mail.app, POP, specialist email providers, storage, thunderbird, tuffmailRelated posts
October 23rd, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Another great advantage of IMAP is the ability for shared access to the mail. webmail.us is my favorite mail hosting company because they offer unlimited bandwidth and up to 5GB storage per account. Of course we all use Mail.app with them, but their webmail interface isn’t too bad either.
October 24th, 2006 at 4:49 am
I have a web hosting account at DreamHost so I use their IMAP server for my mail.
October 24th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
I’m a recent IMAP convert myself and I love it. I have a web hosting account at LunarPages, and it includes IMAP support which works flawlessly. I use Entourage as my Mac client, and that works very well. (I never liked Mail.app.)
But the best part is using ChatterMail on my Treo — you get notified of email the moment it comes in, like an Enterprise BlackBerry, and of course any deleting, filing, replying, etc, is then visible at home. To get the live email notification, the IMAP server has to support push (IMAP IDLE), which apparently .Mac does not, for whatever reason. For Treo users with IMAP accounts, definitely check out Chattermail — it’s super cool.
October 24th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
I was wrong — it’s actually called ChatterEmail, in case you’re looking for it.
October 24th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
I’m also a big tuffmail fan. I just posted an article on why I use IMAP instead of GMail that covers some similar material in more depth.
October 24th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Just a reminder because it is imap you should still have at least one mail client that stores a copy of each email as a backup. Even service providers have breakdowns and bad back-up policies. Just a thought.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:23 am
You’ve mentioned about all the reasons why I myself chose for IMAP on my own server as well. I’m using roundcube for webmail to access email all around the world stored on my mac mini located on my desktop. But you should make sure you’ve got a good backup strategy ! Because if something happens all is gone…
January 18th, 2008 at 8:26 am
As someone who until recently worked for a company which had outsourced all email functions for 100+ employees to Tuffmail, I can attest to the fact that the service works well and is a good value, especially when it comes to filtering spam.
Just keep in mind that there are quite a few hops between you and the service provider — these hops are not under control of you or the provider. If there is some routing problem you won’t be able to access your email. You won’t even be able to tell your users via email that you have a problem… *sigh*
Although Mac Mail will store a cache of your email messages, if you ever need to resynchronize your mailbox and you have lots of attachments, you may as well forget about touching your mail again for a day.
Larger interests with many users would do well to have an in-house IMAP email server, while letting Tuffmail filter incoming email ahead of their server.