Comments on: IMAP – what’s that?

By: Ein Westfale in Bayern » Blog Archiv » Ein neuer Heim-Server muß her

Ein Westfale in Bayern » Blog Archiv » Ein neuer Heim-Server muß her — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:00:17 +0000

[...] und FTP-Server für meine Fotos, nein, den nehme ich vor allem als persönlichen IMAP-Server her. So kann ich jederzeit von jedem Rechner an meine Emails ran (das habe ich mit POP3 doch arg [...]

By: Jim Puskar

Jim Puskar — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:46:08 +0000

I currently use sonic.net for our DSL service at my workplace, but I’m a Mac user at home, and I currently use Earthlink for my home DSL service. Are there any considerations with using sonic.net’s DSL, e-mail, web hosting, etc. on a Mac?

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:06:16 +0000

I currently use Gmail. I know I’ll never reach the storage capacity. How much storage is sonic allocating to users?

By: Dane Jasper

Dane Jasper — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:50:17 +0000

POP and IMAP are very different in their performance demands. IMAP means repeated access, lots of updates and potentially huge amounts of storage. Our webmail platform also uses IMAP, so we’ve got experience with these requirements.

The powerful capabilities that IMAP makes available are worth the investment in these resources. It’s our hope that customers will choose our service or stay with our service partly because of features like IMAP.

-Dane

By: trinsic

trinsic — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:33:43 +0000

I wanted to ask about the performance hit you guys will take on your servers, by handling tons of IMAP requests, are you going to be able to scale with the demand? Sonic.net users IMAP folders can get pretty big. Are you guys storing the mail normally in files or do you have a database to store each sonic.net users IMAP mail?

By: Dane Jasper

Dane Jasper — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:01:31 +0000

The big difference between IMAP and POP’s “leave mail on server” option is that the mailboxes are synchronized. This means that if you delete something, it’s gone, as viewed from all devices (multiple PCs, mobile devices, etc). Also, if you file something in a folder, it’s there, on all devices. This lets you work from many locations, all in sync.

Regarding your comments Robert, privacy is always a valid concern. Here at Sonic.net, we’ve got a privacy philosophy that would protect you from concerns about advertisers and such. But, if you commit some crime and we get a subpoena that requires us to provide access to the message store, we’d be obligated to do so. Likely in this sort of incident they’d have already come to your door and taken your PC, so if you saved the data locally you might not be any better off. Just some thoughts.

-Dane

By: Barbara Dormire

Barbara Dormire — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:19:27 +0000

How much does IMAP cost. Right now I can get my e-mail from other computers-I am at work now-Why switch?

By: Robert Farmer

Robert Farmer — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:47:15 +0000

The problem with webmail and IMAP too as I see it is one of security. I simply don’t want all my personal email sitting around forever in some archive for someone else (either within the company or outside affiliates such as advertisers or insurers or credit agencies or even govt) to be able to access. You are saying to me “Trust me with all your personal mail, I will take care of it for you.” Just like Google or Yahoo. NO WAY.

Thanks for giving me the chance to sound off.

By: emanuel

emanuel — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 04:22:40 +0000

Just a quick question if I may.
From time to time, I had setup Thunderbird and/or Outlook to leave copies of emails on the POP server. In this case doesn’t the POP server feel like an IMAP?

By: neil dunaetz

neil dunaetz — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 03:49:39 +0000

Thanks for educating me about IMAP. I’ve been using only sonic webmail for 5 months, so now I’m eager to try accessing through Thunderbird. As always, sonic.net rules! Neil