IMAP SERVICE PROVIDERS
A Step in Dealing with
Viruses, Spam, and Email Overload

Meta Notes

IMAP-Related News and Advertisements

IMAP-related news items are also posted to in my Deflexion.com blog. This blog includes lots of other links & commentary — a.k.a. “deflexion & reflexion” — about email, computing, mathematics, science, philosophy, and actually anything that I am interested in!

IMAP & ManageSIEVE servers IMP & SquirrelMail browser-based clients TuffMail hosts Infinite Ink's email also discussed below
also discussed below	also discussed below
	also discussed below
shell access, procmail, pine, rails, more DH matches donations to selected charities (e.g., >$40,000 sent to the Red Cross) $50 discount if you use promotion code iiPromo also discussed below
2005-Nov-29: Firefox 1.5	IMAP & NNTP client 2005-Sep-28: Pine 4.64 also discussed below
Support Gmane by donating or spreading the word. Gmane provides mail-to-news/web/RSS deflexion for many IMAP-related and other mailing lists
HTTP, RSS, IMAP, NNTP, IRC, & BitTorrent client 2005-09-20: Opera 8.50 (no BitTorrent) (ad-free & registration-free for all!) 2005-07-29: 8.10 Preview 2 (+BitTorrent) (gratis registration codes) 2005-10-20: Opera 9 Preview 1 (new IMAP code, BitTorrent coming soon)

 Ongoing:   The following del.icio.us bookmarks are regularly updated and may be useful to readers of this page.

• all my bookmarks
• all my bookmarks related to IMAP (tagged Messaging/IMAP)
• some of my bookmarks related to hosting providers (tagged HostingProviders); specific providers are in my HostingProviders/* tags
• some of my bookmarks related to Internet messaging (tagged Messaging); specific subtopics are in my Messaging/* tags
• some of my bookmarks related to messaging clients (tagged Messaging/Clients); specific clients are in my Messaging/Clients/* tags
• all bookmarks from all del.icio.us users with the tag:
  • imap
  • hosting
  • hostingproviders
  • provider
  • providers
  • host
  • hosts
  • mail
  • email
  • webmail

Ongoing (starting 2005 September):

• Lots of blogging, discussing and del.icio.us bookmarking about the open-source (GPL'd) RoundCube Webmail Project, which “is a browser-based [AJAX] multilingual IMAP client with an application-like user interface.” Even though RoundCube is in αlpha testing and is buggy, Tuffmail, Eumx.net, and Aventuremail.co.uk have made RoundCube available to their customers. Customers of DreamHost, which is dicussed in The Table below, can Set up Roundcube on Dreamhost.
  
  
• Lots of blogging, discussing, and del.icio.us bookmarking about the open-source VC-funded ($16 million) Zimbra Collaboration Suite, which includes its own IMAP server and AJAX webmail client. Unfortunately, based on my reading of their forums, e.g. this and this thread, and the Zimbra Architectural Overview (PDF), it seems that the architecture they have chosen for their IMAP server & mailstore is going to suck, especially when it's used by many heavy IMAP users with large mailboxes. I hope I'm wrong and that they have created an IMAP server that is as robust, fast, & scalable as the Cyrus and Isode IMAP servers, but I doubt it.
  
  

My guess is that the RoundCube buzz and the Zimbra buzz is mainly because the free/libre open-source software (FLOSS) world desperately needs a decent browser-based AJAX messaging client so it can compete with the non-FLOSS browser-based AJAX messaging clients (Outlook Web Access, Google Mail, Oddpost, etc.). (The Zimbra buzz is probably helped a bit by their PR team and the above-mentioned $16 million dollars.)

2005 December 4-?:    In comp.mail.misc, there is a thread about Who should run a mail server?, in which David Segall asks this:

What are the pros and cons of running ones own mail server? If a small (fifteen person) company without any computer experts wanted to do so would you encourage or discourage them?

My response, which I have not yet posted to the above comp.mail.misc thread, is this:

The only person who should run a mail server is someone who is a full-time mail system administrator and is 100% committed to keeping up with all the latest vulnerabilities.

I realized that before I publicly respond to a question like this, I needed to update the list of providers that I recommend people try before choosing a mail hosting provider. Here is my current list:

• FastMail.FM (on Infinite Ink probation until they set up their new servers and new backup system, but they are still worth checking out; see 2005 November 10-13 news item below)
• IMAP-Partners
• LuxSci
• MailSnare
• Tuffmail

This list is ordered alphabetically and the links go to the section of this page where I discuss the provider. I'm sure there are other decent mail hosting providers, including some on this page; these are just the ones that I know enough about to feel comfortable recommending.

Another recommendation I have is to avoid using a web-hosting provider for mail hosting. I read a lot of discussion groups about web-hosting providers and they are pretty much universally clueless about what it takes to be a good mail-hosting provider these days.

2005 November 28:    As announced this message in the gmane.ietf.mta-filters discussion group, Philip Guenther and Tim Showalter submitted a new IETF Internet draft (draft-ietf-sieve-3028bis-05.txt) for Sieve: An Email Filtering Language. Sieve is a standard mail filtering language that can be used for server-side or client-side filtering. Sieve is used for server-side filtering at many IMAP providers, including Tuffmail.com and FastMail.FM, which are two providers that I use.

  I am collecting Sieve-related links at del.icio.us / Deflexion.com / Messaging / Sieve.

2005 November 25:    As I announced in a blog post titled Turning on Comments or My Own Private Usenet, I have enabled comments in my Deflexion.com blog. Your comments are welcome!

2005 November 10-13:    As announced in the FastMail.FM Status blog and explained in the Server 4 outage FAQ, some FastMail.FM users had up to 55 hours of downtime starting 2005 November 10. Because of this, I can no longer label FastMail.FM with one of my recommendation icons (e.g. ). Note that because I use FastMail.FM myself and because FastMail.FM has very public discussion groups, I am much more aware of their problems than I am of the problems at other providers. I still have a lot of respect the FastMail.FM team because of their transparency, because of everything they do to support open-source standards-based messaging, and because, according to Outage FAQ #9, no mail was lost during this fiasco.

2005 September 30:    As discussed in this thread at gmane.mail.mulberry.user, this thread at EmailDiscussions.com (EMD), and this thread at Slashdot.org, ISAMET/Cyrusoft, the makers of the Mulberry IMAP client, announced that “the company today filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.”

My guess is that there will never again be such a powerful, standards-compliant, IMAP, CalDAV, and ManageSIEVE desktop client. If we are lucky, the amazing Cyrus Daboo will now turn his commitment to open standards & interoperability towards a robust browser-based messaging system, something which is sorely needed and which might save us all from being assimilated by the big co's (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL, etc.).

Thank you to Cyrus and his team for the 10 years they spent creating one of the rare powerful standards-compliant Internet messaging systems.

Note: The Cyrus Electronic Mail Project, which includes the excellent Cyrus IMAP server, is alive and well!

2005 September 20:    Apple Introduces Major Enhancements to .Mac. Mac.com is an IMAP service provider that is discussed in this section of The Table below.

2005 September 19:    In Ted Leung's blog, there is an interesting discussion about Model-View separation and Web mail, which includes this quote by Ted:

“Just when we finally achieved "model-view separation" for e-mail (IMAP and IMAP clients), the webmail world smashed those things back together. If Gmail and Yahoo start a competition around innovations in e-mail client features -- something we're desperately in need of -- it reduces my ability to get the features I want because my mail data, my mail address, and the user interface for mail are not just bundled together, they're welded together.

I'm definitely not excited.”

2005 September 15:    As announced at the FastMail.FM weblog in this blog item and at EMD in this message, FastMail.FM now supports “WebDAV access to your file storage.” Fastmail.FM is an IMAP provider that I describe in this section of The Table below.

2005 September 14:   As announced here, the Apache Software Foundation released SpamAssassin 3.1.0. SpamAssassin is used by many (maybe most!) mail service providers and includes support for Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which is an extension to SMTP that tries to fight email-address forgery (spoofing).

Even if your mail service provider does not do SPF checking, I recommend that you use the SPF tester at DNSstuff.com or at Pobox.com to see if the combination of your SMTP MAIL FROM address and your outgoing SMTP server will be considered a forgery by systems that do SPF checking.

I discuss SPF in this item in What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider below.

2005 September 13:    As posted in this message at EMD, the Oddpost Team announced that they are beta testing the new Yahoo! Mail. Details about Oddpost, which was an IMAP service provider that was acquired by Yahoo! for ~30 million dollars (!), are in the Oddpost section of The Table below. No news about whether this new Oddpostified Yahoo! Mail will support IMAP -- let me know if you know!

2005 August 29:    As announced at the FastMail.FM weblog in this blog item, “FastMail.FM now gives [Members+] the ability to send SMS (text) messages from your account to mobile phones.” Fastmail.FM is a provider that I describe in this section of The Table below.

2005 August 22:    Alexey Melnikov submitted Common IMAP keywords (draft-melnikov-imap-keywords-03) to the Internet Engineering Task Force. As stated in the Abstract:

“The aim of this document is to document some common [IMAP4] keywords for the purpose of improving interoperability between different IMAP mail clients. The document both documents some keywords already in use, as well as introduces several new ones.”

I discuss IMAP keywords in this item in What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider below.

2005 August 22:    There is an interesting discussion in Joseph Scott's blog titled Email Tags, which discusses IMAP keywords and other IMAP & general email topics. I discuss IMAP keywords in this item in What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider below.

2005 August 17:    Isode published a whitepaper titled Benchmarking M-Box - Isode's IMAP/POP Message Store, which compares the Cyrus, Courier, UWash, Dovecot, and M-Box IMAP servers. Reading this might help you to decide what type of IMAP server you'd like your IMAP service provider to use.

2005 August 14-12:    If you have any doubt about whether IMAP has arrived, check out the following links:

• 2005 August 14: TimesOnline.co.uk: Power up your e-mail
• 2005 August 12: engadget.com: How would you change Gmail? — “IMAP” is mentioned more than 60 (!) times (and “I-FREAKING-MAP” is mentioned once) in the Reader Comments

I think it's safe to say that IMAP is !

2005 August 12 - July 24:    On this page, I made lots of updates in the Terminology section and added the following:

• the term “Subscribed” cabinet (aka “Subscribed” virtual collection, “Subscribed” virtual directory, and “Subscribed” virtual hierarchy)
• the term reverse DNS record (aka rDNS record and PTR record)
• the term SMTP path, which was inspired by a 2005-July-22 New Scientist article about "SMTP Path Analysis" titled Retracing spam steps could halt mass emails.
• a diagram that illustrates the relationship between the objects in an IMAP mailstore (messages, mailboxes, & directories).

2005 June 21:    In Jeremy Zawodny's blog, there is a discussion about Death to IMAP Clients. This discussion includes a comment by me in which I say “Unfortunately I too have come to the conclusion that all IMAP clients suck.”

2005 June 18:    In a message on the spam tools mailing list, John R. Levine said:

“A friend of mine notes that the primary publishers of Sender-ID [SPF] records are bulk senders: ESPs and spammers. So the no-sender-id [warning in Hotmail] will in practice mean "not spam".”

So, according to John and others, it is probably time to delete the spam-signifying Sender-ID/SPF records for your domains (if any such record exists). For more about this, see Microsoft's Hotmail demands Sender-ID, backlash to follow in John's blog and Spammers Continue To Be The Biggest (By Far) Supporters Of Email Authentication at Techdirt.

2005 May 25-31:    In comp.mail.imap, there is a discussion about INBOX, how is it really supposed to work? This discussion includes two messages from me.

2005 May 21-25:    In Jeremy Zawodny's blog, there is a discussion about GMail vs. Thunderbird: GMail wins! This discussion includes a comment by me about why I have not switched to Gmail.

2005 May 23:    In comp.mail.pine, Mark Crispin, the inventor of IMAP, posted a followup message that includes this:

> The problem with maildir and IMAP access
> is that the format itself does not lend
> itself for IMAP access.

This has been my conclusion as well. ...
The Courier server ... flagrantly violates 
IMAP in multiple ways and I think that it 
also violates maildir.

For more about this topic, see item #4 in Rumors, Musings, and Opinions about the History and Future of IMAP below and the article titled FUD by Sam Varshavchik, the author of the Courier IMAP server.

2005 May 23:   Lots of updates in the Terminology section below, including the addition of the terms cabinet, virtual mailbox, and IMAP path.

2005 May 12:    As announced here, AOL launched AIM Mail, which is free/gratis and includes “industry-leading spam and anti-virus protection so that your AIM Mail box remains free of spam and viruses. It comes with 2GB of mail storage and also includes support for IMAP.” I've added aim.com to The List below.

2005 May 8 and 6:    In the DreamHost forum, I posted two messages about changing MX records — feedback is welcome either in the DH forum, which is open to anyone, or by emailing me.

2005 May 2:   At EmailDiscussions.com (EMD), Trip posted an April 2005 Uptime Report. Of the 18 mail service providers listed, 17 had 99% or better uptime, 10 had 99.9% or better uptime, and 3 had 99.99% or better uptime.

2005 April 25, 24, 14, and March 31:    Lots of blogging about moving to browser-based email and browser-based software in general.

• 2005 April 25: In Backpack Preview #3: Web 1.0 calling Web 2.0, Jason Fried of 37signals.com said “And what was the star of Web 1.0? Email. Backpack takes a fresh look at email.” Backpack is a browser-based personal information manager (PIM) by the people who created Basecamp.
• 2005 April 24: In Living by the browser, Rafe Colburn said “The big change for me came when I realized that I strongly prefer Gmail to Thunderbird.”
• 2005 April 24: In Websourcing Process, Rael Dornfest said “Apple's [.Mac] service is always running in the background ... handling my personal email.”
• 2005 April 14: In Running your company on web apps, Evan Williams said “I think nearly everyone here uses [Gmail] as their client. We just forward our @odeo.com mail there.”
• 2005 March 31: In What's going on at Infinite Ink and Deflexion.com, I said that I've started using Horde/IMP 4.0+ because it “supports 1) saved searches across multiple mailboxes [aka virtual folders] and 2) the IMAP flag command.” And (of course) because it is a browser-based IMAP client that is compatible with my other IMAP clients and is available anywhere!

If you are interested in moving to browser-based software, this IMAP Service Providers page will (I hope) help you find a good browser-based email system and hosting provider. To get an overview of what's going on in browser-based software and web services, read the above four blog items and follow their links.

2005 April 6:    As announced here, Lux Scientiae, which is discussed in The Table below, “today became the only premium secure e-mail provider to offer lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) access to shared e-mail address books. The move makes it possible for companies to outsource their e-mail and still have shared address book access from their e-mail clients.” Support for LDAP-accessible address books is currently #40 in my list of What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider.

2005 March 4-26:   On this page:

• Added a Terminology subsection to the IMAP: What & Why section.
  
  
• Updated What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider so there are now 54 things to look for. The updates include the following.
  • Added an important note about backing up and restoring IMAP flags and other IMAP metadata (#2).
  • Added domain hosting (#4). “Domain hosting” is defined in the new Terminology section.
  • Added “Saved Global Search (aka virtual folders)” (#26).
  • Added “Global Search (but without saving the search conditions)” (#27).
  • Split “support for shared and public IMAP-accessible mailboxes” into two items (#29 and #30).
  • Added “ability to view .doc, .xls, and other types of attachments in the webmail client” (#33).
    
    
• Updated the Recommendation Icons section so it now says “For most people who are looking for robust managed mail and web hosting, I recommend that you get two providers: one for mail hosting and one for web hosting.”
  
  
• Added Non-Public IMAP Service Providers (Alumni Associations, etc.) to the Service Providers section.
  
  

2005 March 20:    Moved Tuffmail.com from The List to The Table and marked it as a mail-hosting provider that I recommend based on my research ().

2004 December 29, 28, and 14:    Lots of blogging about administering personal and family email:

• 2004-12-29: The front lines of the spam wars by Rafe Colburn
• 2004-12-28: Ross on Family Tech Support by Jeremy Zawodny
• 2004-12-14: And speaking of gifts by Lawrence Lessig

The last two blog entries each include a comment by me. I think 2005 is the year that people — including techies like Rafe Colburn and Jeremy Zawodny — will realize:

It's smart to outsource your email administration.

(Unless, of course, you want to be a full-time email administrator.) 2004 is when I finally realized this and outsourced my family's email. For my personal email, I use a combination of Procmail for blue/green/yellow separation & message deflexion (on the servers that host my domains), SpamAssassin/ClamAV for yellow/red separation (at FastMail.FM), and many different IMAP servers (including one running on my Mac).

2004 November 15:    Reuters published an article titled Yahoo, EarthLink to Test New Anti-Spam System, which discusses DomainKeys and mentions that DomainKeys are also supported by Gmail and Sify. I updated the section below called What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider so that “Support for message authentication using DomainKeys (DK)” is now in the list.

2004 November 10:    In the article Google Brings E-Mail Client Access to Gmail, Matt Hicks says:

“On Wednesday, the company began providing free POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) access on Gmail accounts.”

There is a lot of discussion about this around the Net and many people are wondering about IMAP access to Gmail, including:

• Ben Hammersley in his blog entry about Gmail POP access, and
• the Gmail-Users group, which includes a message from me about IMAP keywords.

I list Gmail in the Probably No IMAP4rev1 section below.  I am collecting Gmail-related links at Del.icio.us / Deflexion.com / HostingProviders / Gmail.

2004 November 10:    Added a subsection called Out of Business to the Problematic Providers section below. This might provide clues about types of providers to avoid.

2004 October 16 - 26:   I updated the following so they now include lots of links and information related to IMAP keywords.

• Setting Keywords or Labels on the Procmail Quick Start page.
• Setting Up Keywords (Labels) On the Power Pine page. This includes a tip about using keywords to implement David Allen's Getting Things Done strategy that is relevant to all IMAP clients that support keywords.
• Keyword (Label) Wishes on the All About Pine page.
• This item and the item below it on this page in the section 'What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider.' These items discuss servers, clients, and delivery agents that support IMAP keywords.
•   My del.icio.us bookmarks related to Keywords and GTD (Getting Things Done).

2004 September 30:   As announced at the FastMail.FM weblog in this & this item, and at EMD in this thread, FastMail.FM "Full subscribers get 600MB email storage, enhanced get 2GB." This upgrade was implemented on September 30. FastMail.FM is one of my providers and a provider that I describe in The Table below.

If you sign up with FastMail.FM and want to help Infinite Ink, please use this link to initiate your registration.

2004 September 29:   As announced here, ".Mac Mail and iDisk combined storage space for full membership has been increased to 250 MB. Default settings are 125 MB of mail storage and 125 MB of iDisk space, and you can designate the storage to fit the way you use your .Mac account." .Mac Mail is described in The Table below.

2004 September 28:    Updated the section called IMAP Arena 2: SeaMonkey (Mozilla Suite) and Thunderbird versus Pine on my All About Pine page. That page also includes a comparison of Pine and its other main competitors, Mutt and Mulberry.

2004 September 22:    In the article An analysis of Microsoft's MARID patent applications, John R. Levine says:

“The IETF MARID [MTA Authorization Records in DNS] working group slogged away all summer trying to produce a draft standard about e-mail sender verification. They started with Meng Wong's SPF and Microsoft's Caller ID for E-mail, which got stirred together into a hybrid called Sender ID. One of the issues hanging over the MARID process has been Microsoft's Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) . . .”

If you are interested in the future of email, I recommend that you read the rest of John's article.

2004 September 16, August 26, and 25:    MailSnare published SPF records, added Greylisting to its repertoire of anti-spam tools, and upgraded multi-account business plans. MailSnare is described in The Table below and is one of the providers that I recommend.

2004 September 6:    I changed the icons that I use to recommend providers. I now use for a recommended mail-hosting provider and for a recommended web-hosting provider. I have not yet found a provider that I would recommend for both mail and web hosting. If you know of a provider that is good at both mail (IMAP, user-customizable filtering, keywords, etc.) and web hosting, please let me know.

2004 August 24:    Verio launched their Take the Credit Customer Referral Program. As I discuss in this and this section below, Verio is one of my providers and a provider that I highly recommend (). If you decide to sign up with Verio, please let me know so I can "take the credit"! (Note that I am also a Verio reseller but I am not currently reselling because I do not want to get into the business of collecting money and providing support, both of which can be huge jobs.)

2004 July 27:   As announced here, at Bluebottle the "storage quota for each mail account has upgraded to 250Mb." Bluebottle, which is listed first in The Table below, is free/gratis and is a testing ground for their Trusted Delivery™ challenge/response system.

2004 July 21:   I posted a message in comp.mail.imap Re: IMAP vs. Gmail (was: IMAP keywords (labels) / Annotate[more]) in which I said:

“I want a good Internet messaging system ... And I finally came to the realization that maybe the solution lies outside the IMAP world. Maybe Gmail's on the right track. Or maybe Chandler is. Or maybe the RSS/Atom/Syndication/WebFeed folks are.”

If you are interested in the future of email and Internet messaging in general, I recommend that you read the rest of my message, which includes a quote from Google's Sergey Brin and the rest of the thread.

2004 July 9:   As discussed here and here, "Oddpost is thrilled to declare that we’ve been acquired by Yahoo!'" Oddpost, which is discussed in this section below, is an IMAP service provider. This acquisition means that Yahoo!, which is listed in the Probably No IMAP4rev1 section below, will probably eventually support intertwingled email & web feeding, which Oddpost supports.

2004 July 8:   According to this thread at EMD, Mailblocks has been acquired by AOL. Both AOL (discussed below) and Mailblocks (discussed below) are IMAP service providers.

2004 July 1:   As announced here, IMAP-Partners.net, which is described in The Table below, "now offer[s] anti-spam at no charge, and anti-virus and even group calendar features for modest, per-user fees. You wanted a lower entry price: overall prices drop by as much as 20% to 50% for some packages."

2004 June 22:    LuxSci, which is discussed in The Table below, “has changed its prices for introductory accounts. Our basic account now starts with 100Mb disk space (instead of 25).”

2004 June 16:   As announced here and here, Runbox, which is discussed in The Table below, “has decided to increase online storage space for all paying subscriber accounts to 1 GB for email and 100 MB for files. This will be implemented approximately July 1, and prices will remain the same [$29.95/year].” I think that this is the first IMAP provider that is offering at least 1000 MB of mail storage on all their plans.

2004 May 28 and April 30:    DreamHost, which is discussed below, increased disk space & bandwidth by 60% on all their plans. They also added a new option to their Rewards program: Now you can “Earn $65 CASH for each account you refer!” (If this had been an option during the last couple years, I could have earned 47 x $65 = $3055, since I have directly referred 47 customers to DreamHost!)

2004 May 22:   As announced here, MailSnare “Enhanced accounts [now] come with 100MB of storage and 10 aliases. All customers with existing enhanced accounts will have automatically received this upgrade, including an additional 40MB of storage space and 5 additional aliases.” The MailSnare Enhanced account is $19.95/year (i.e., ~$1.66/month or 20¢/MB/year) and is discussed in detail in The Table below.

2004 May 21   Cyrusoft International, Inc., the makers of the Mulberry IMAP client, announced that they have merged with Information Security Engineering Lab, Inc. and changed their name to ISAMET, Inc.

2004 May 13   Google started βeta testing Google Groups 2. This service provides an easy way for anyone to create a free/gratis discussion group that can be accessed via email, the web, or an atom feed. This is relevant to this IMAP Service Providers page because it means that you do not need to rely on your IMAP provider for mailing-list management, and instead can use the Google Groups 2 service for your mailing list management. (That's what I'm doing!)

2004 April 5:  As discussed in the Unofficial AOL Email FAQ:

“... on April 5, 2004, things changed drastically as AOL announced Open Mail Access -- IMAP and authenticated Authenticated SMTP servers available to its membership. (These functions were introduced over time first to users of CompuServe 2000, then to foreign AOL markets.)”

I've added AOL to The List of more reasonably-priced IMAP service providers below in this item. This is great news for all IMAP users because it means that it is likely that more and better IMAP clients and tools are going to be produced (because there are now ~40 million new IMAP users who might want these tools!).  I am collecting AOL-related links at del.icio.us / Deflexion.com / HostingProviders / AOL.

2004 April 3:  As announced here, here, here, and here: “It is with sincere regret that we are writing to inform you that geekmail [discussed below] will discontinue services as of April 9. 2004.”

2004 April 2:  Today I became a Verio Reseller. I haven't decided if I am actually going to resell their services, but I decided that I am willing to pay big bucks to have a provider that I can depend on (see, for example, the details of the Verio Signature Hosting plan below). As a reseller, the price becomes reasonable and I have the option of reselling and making some money. If I decide to become a service provider, my target audience will be people who want a robust FreeBSD shell account that supports procmail, spamassassin, clamav, vsnag, pine, mutt, LOAF, and lots more. Note that my plan is not to compete with IMAP providers, but instead to offer a service that power users can use in conjunction with their IMAP hosting provider — or with Gmail or with any mail-hosting provider. For example, as I describe in this section of my Procmail Quick Start, I currently use procmail to deflect my mailing-list messages to my FastMail.FM IMAP-accessible mailboxes.

If you have any thoughts, advice, words of wisdom, or warnings about this, please post in the Infinite Ink discussion group.

Google-Related News  ^#

2004 March 31:  As announced here, MailSnare (discussed below) has added basic RSS news feed capability to their VisualOffice test site. Note that GeekMail (discussed below) and OddPost (discussed below) also offer this.

2004 March 21:  In the article Internet Providers Should Find Their Way to IMAP (single-page printer version) at The Washington Post, Rob Pegoraro says the following about IMAP-based email:

“Spam and viruses are easier to deflect, since your mail software can peek at each new message before downloading it, then wipe it off the server before it gets to stain your hard drive. But if your computer does get wiped out by a virus, you won't lose your e-mail from it.”

An online discussion about this article is transcribed in Fast Forward: E-Mail Evolution. Especially interesting is this comment from someone in Virginia:

“Just a word of warning for those using IMAP. My wife was doing this in order to read her email at work and at home, just as you recommended. But recently, our provider had a catastrophic RAID failure that they could not recover from, so all that email saved on their server was lost! Most bigger providers should have ways of recovering from this, but ours did not (yes, we will be taking our accounts elsewhere).”

“Daily or more backups” is #2 in my list of What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider below. I recommend that you do not even consider an IMAP provider that does not do backups & restores. And make sure you test their restore procedure ASAP (before you need it!).

2004 March 19:  If you use Pine and Procmail, and would like to help find a general solution to the spam problem, I recommend that you try LOAF, a GPL'd distributed-social-network filter that Maciej Ceglowski announced today (2004-03-19). It currently works with Procmail and Pine.  I am collecting LOAF-related links at Del.icio.us / Deflexion.com / Messaging / LOAF.

2004 February 23:   Added a section called Minimizing False Positives With Greenlists and Bluelists to my Procmail Quick Start. Being able to use a greenlist, which is sometimes called a whitelist, is #5 on my list below of What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider.

2004 February 18:    Added two items in the section What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider, one about Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and one about syndication.

2004 January 17 and 20   As announced in this and this message, SpamAssassin 2.62 and 2.63 released, respectively. SpamAssassin is a popular spam-detection and scoring tool that is often used in conjunction with Procmail and IMAP.

If you use SpamAssassin, or any other spam-detection tool, I recommend that you plug it in after you process your “bluelist” (solicited bulk) and “greenlist” messages. This will both save processor power and avoid false positives & the mangling of messages that are almost surely not spam. For more about my spam-fighting strategy, see Reverse Spam Filtering: Winning Without Fighting.

2004 January 10:    In preparation for the upcoming release of Pine 4.60, which will support IMAP keywords (labels), I am re-evaluating which providers I recommend. Most Cyrus, Mirapoint, and UW IMAP servers support keywords but Courier IMAP can support keywords only in version 2.1 and later. If you use a provider that uses Courier IMAP, please let me know if their server supports IMAP keywords. One way you can test this is to use Mulberry 3.1 or later to view a mailbox on the server. Then right click on any message, choose Flags from the pop-up window, and see if the 8 user-defined Labels are available (i.e., not grayed out).

2004 January 4:   Lots of tweaks and updates on this page, including...

• An item in the IMAP: What & Why section, which describes three ways to use IMAP mailboxes to update server-side filters.
  
  
• An item and a item related to IMAP keywords (labels) in the section What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider.
  
  
• A number of providers have either gone out of business or are no longer accepting new sign-ups. Many of these providers were killed (or seriously injured) by spam, viruses, and other Net abuse. I've left these in The Table with a gray background and a note about what's happening with the provider.
  
  
• Of the providers that are still in business, many have upped their services and/or lowered their prices! I haven't updated all of them so if any details wrong below, please post in the Infinite Ink discussion group.
  
  
• Lots of new IMAP providers added to this page. A few years ago it was hard to find IMAP providers, but now they are everywhere — I think 2004 will be the year that IMAP arrives for non-techies (2003 was the year it really arrived for techies!).
  
  
  

2003 November 21:    Spamcop.net, which is in The Table below, announced that in June 2003 they were bought by IronPort, the Bonded-Sender company.

2003 November 21:   At Deflexion.com in this blog item, I posted a response to a discussion thread at EMD about some things that I say on this page. The title of the blog item is EMailDiscussions.com - MailSnare recommended, FM not ...

2003 September 19 and September 3:   Added sections named Snagging Viruses and Using SpamAssassin to the Procmail Quick Start: An introduction to mail filtering with a focus on procmail. These Procmail recipes are especially useful when Procmail can deliver “possibly spam” and “possibly virus” messages to mailboxes on an IMAP server. This way you can use an IMAP client to delete (or save) messages in these mailboxes and you do not need to waste time and bandwidth downloading the bodies of these spam and virus messages.

The old IMAP news items that used to be on this page are archived on my Deflexion.com blog on the page called Pre-October-2003 Deflexion & Reflexion from the IMAP Service Providers Page.

Note about the ordering of these terms: The terms listed earlier are used in the definitions of later terms.

individual account or personal account or single-user account

A customer of a service provider with a single user.

group account or family account or business account or reseller account or multi-user account

A customer of a service provider with multiple users.

user or login or user account or account

A person with her own username, login ID, password, email address, IMAP-accessible mailstore, and possibly server-side file (non-mailbox) storage. Important: A user is not the same as an email address because on many systems it is possible for a single user to have multiple email addresses (see the definitions of email alias and subaddress below). Note: The word account is ambiguous because it is sometimes used to mean multi-user account (defined in previous item).

username or account name

The sequence of characters that identifies a user on a particular system. Some systems have very restrictive limits on what a username can be, but a user can often get her desired email address by creating an email alias. For more about this, see While Signing Up: Choosing Your Username, Password, Domain Name, Aliases, and More below.

login ID or sign-in ID

The sequence of characters that is used to log in to a system. Sometimes the login ID is a user's username, sometimes it is a user's primary email address on the system, and sometimes it is something else. Some IMAP servers, for example imap.cyrusoft.com, allow anonymous logins. Note: On some systems, the IMAP server and the outgoing SMTP server use different login IDs.

administrative user or administrator or admin or master user

A person who can edit the global configuration for an account. This might include adding & deleting users, creating & deleting shared and public mailboxes, setting ACLs (access control lists), setting the default “skin” of the webmail client, and specifying SMTP-level filtering for a domain (blocklists, greylisting, SPF policy, etc.). Note: On some systems, the person who is the administrative user has two login IDs, one for configuring the system & managing her users, and one for doing email and other regular-user activities.

INBOX

A user's default incoming mailbox on a particular IMAP server. The string INBOX is case-insensitive, but it is often written in upper-case letters because that is how it is written in the IMAP specification (RFC 3501). [Geek Note: If you have shell access to your IMAP server, you might discover that there is no mailbox named INBOX. This is because INBOX is a nickname or abstraction and the IMAP protocol translates the special name INBOX to the actual default incoming mailbox name on that particular IMAP server. Examples of actual default incoming mailboxes include /var/spool/mail/username, /var/spool/imap/user/username, and $HOME/Maildir ]

mailbox or box or mail folder or folder

A container of messages. INBOX, Drafts, and Sent (which is sometimes called Sent Items, Sent Messages, sent-mail, or sentmail) are examples of mailboxes. Note 1: The word folder is ambiguous because it is sometimes used to mean directory (defined below). Note 2: In the POP world each user has only one remote mailbox, namely the default incoming mailbox or INBOX, but in the IMAP world a single user will usually have multiple remote mailboxes (this is one of the advantages of IMAP over POP).

sub-mailbox or subfolder

In a user's personal mailbox space, a mailbox which is not the INBOX is sometimes called a sub-mailbox. Note: The word sub-mailbox is misleading because it is possible to set up some IMAP clients so that a user's mailboxes are presented as a flat non-hierarchical structure, i.e., with no mailbox that is “under” or “sub” or “a child of” another mailbox.

local mailbox or local mail folder or local folder

A mailbox that is not accessed using IMAP, but instead is accessed using local file system calls. Contrast this with a remote, aka IMAP-accessible, mailbox. Note: A local mailbox is often in a location or in a (possibly proprietary) format that is readable only by the mail client that created it.

directory or hierarchy or folder

A container of mailboxes and possibly other directories (subdirectories or child directories). Directories can be used to create a “mailbox tree” or “mailbox hierarchy.” For example, I store my solicited-bulk-email boxes in a directory named SBE. There is no standard IMAP hierarchy separator (delimiter), but most IMAP servers use either slash (/), dot (.), or backslash (\). Note: The word folder is ambiguous because it is sometimes used to mean mailbox (defined in the previous three items).

dual-use name or dual-use mailbox or dual-use mail folder or dual-use folder

A container of both mailboxes and messages, i.e., a dual-use name is both a directory (defined in previous item) and a container of messages. For example, on a Courier IMAP server, INBOX is both a container of messages and a container of all of a user's personal mailboxes (other than the INBOX mailbox itself, of course). Note: Some IMAP clients need to be told whether an IMAP server does or does not support dual-use names. For example, in Thunderbird and SeaMonkey (Mozilla Suite), a user needs to check or uncheck the checkbox labeled Server supports folders that contain sub-folders and messages. In Pine, it is useful to set the separate-folder-and-directory-entries feature if you access an IMAP server that supports dual-use names. [Geek Note: Contrast dual-use name with no-inferiors name and no-select name, which are the mailbox and directory types used by UW IMAP when the underlying mailbox format is either mbox or c-client MBX.]

cabinet or virtual collection or virtual directory or virtual hierarchy

A list of mailboxes that are presented as a single directory, but in fact might include mailboxes from multiple directories and multiple IMAP servers. Mulberry uses the word cabinet and Pine uses the phrase pseudo collection and the word view for this. Many IMAP clients support the special “Subscribed” cabinet, which is defined in the next item.

“Subscribed” cabinet or “Subscribed” virtual collection or “Subscribed” virtual directory or “Subscribed” virtual hierarchy or “Subscribed” namespace

A list of mailboxes that a user has subscribed to using the IMAP subscription mechanism. A user's list of subscribed mailboxes for a particular IMAP server is usually stored on that IMAP server and is thus available to all IMAP clients (both desktop and browser-based) that support IMAP subscriptions. Note: Some IMAP clients, for example Mail.app and Pine, do not support IMAP subscriptions.

virtual mailbox or smart mailbox or saved search

A list of messages that are presented as a single mailbox, but in fact might be a subset of the messages in a mailbox or include messages from multiple mailboxes. A virtual mailbox allows you to zoom in on the messages you are interested in. For example, all messages with a particular keyword (label), all messages from a particular email address, or all messages you sent & received during a particular time period.

personal mailstore or personal message store or personal mailbox space or personal folder space or personal mail repository

The collection of all of a user's personal mailboxes, including the user's INBOX, on a particular system. To see a diagram of a personal mailstore and its relation to a mail user agent (MUA), see the 2005-May-26 message I posted to comp.mail.imap. Note: Some providers use the single word mailbox to refer to a user's entire personal mailbox space — this is very confusing if you are familiar with standard IMAP terminology (see the diagram at the beginning of this section and the definition of mailbox above).

personal file storage

Disk space that is used to store a user's non-mailbox data. For example, files that a user sends or receives as email attachments when using a provider's browser-based IMAP client.

IMAP path or IMAP root or IMAP prefix or IMAP namespace

The path to the location of mailboxes of interest. An IMAP path is used when specifying a directory or hierarchy (defined above). Here are some examples.

                                         sample        relative path        full path
IMAP server                 Login        IMAP path     to sample mailbox    to sample mailbox			
========================    =========    ==========    =================    ======================
default Cyrus or Courier    username     INBOX.        2do                  INBOX.2do
default Cyrus or Courier    username     INBOX.        SBE.webdesign-l      INBOX.SBE.webdesign-l
default Cyrus or Courier    username     INBOX.SBE.    webdesign-l          INBOX.SBE.webdesign-l
default Binc                username     INBOX/        2do                  INBOX/2do
University of Washington    username     ~/mail/       2do                  ~/mail/2do
dovecot.org                 anonymous                  dovecot              dovecot
imap.cyrusoft.com           anonymous                  mulberry.discuss     mulberry.discuss
imap.cyrusoft.com           anonymous                  lists.info-cyrus     lists.info-cyrus
imap.cyrusoft.com           anonymous    lists.        info-cyrus           lists.info-cyrus
ftp.cac.washington.edu      anonymous    #ftp/         imap/imap_archive    #ftp/imap/imap_archive

As you can see in the 6th, 7th, and 8th examples above, blank (i.e., nothing) is a possible value for IMAP path. Note: INBOX, ~, and #ftp are nicknames or abstractions and their actual locations on the IMAP server 1] depend on how the IMAP server is configured and 2] are hidden from — and are irrelevant to — a regular user of an IMAP client. Also see RFC 2342 - IMAP4 Namespace, Folder Namespaces section of the Pine Technical Notes, and Namespace (computer science) at .

email alias

An alternate email address that can be used to send mail to a user.  Tips: To be able to send mail From an alias, use both a mail user agent and an outgoing SMTP server that allow you to use multiple roles (aka personalities or identities), i.e., allow you to send “forged” mail. To be able to filter incoming mail based on which alias was the recipient, choose a mail hosting provider that injects a mail header line that records the original envelope recipient address. Also see the definition of subaddress in the next item.

subaddress or plus address or user-extension address or detailed address

An email address that can be used to send mail directly to a mailbox (that already exists) in a user's mailstore. If a user's address is user@example.com, a subaddress is usually of the form user+mailbox@example.com or user-mailbox@example.com. If the target mailbox does not exist, some — but not all — systems will deliver the message to the user's INBOX. Subaddresses are especially useful for signing up for mailing lists, banking services, shopping services, RSS-to-mail services, or any service where you want to be able to easily track (and possibly filter or reject) mail from a particular entity. There is more information about subaddressing below.

MX hosting or domain hosting or virtual domain hosting or vanity domain hosting

The option to point the DNS MX record of your domain at your mail service provider's incoming mail exchange (MX) server. MX hosting is essential if you want 1) to have robust SMTP-level spam filtering for your domain's incoming mail and 2) to avoid the problems with forwarding.  Tip: Some IMAP providers offer both mail and web domain hosting, but I recommend that you get an IMAP provider whose focus is mail hosting and host your domain's web site (e.g., DNS A record) with a provider whose focus is web hosting.

catchall alias or catchall address

An email address that catches all the email for a domain that was not directed to an existing user in the domain. Because of spam, I recommend that you turn off the catchall address for your domain(s). Make sure that you get a provider that rejects catchall mail at the SMTP-level with a “user unknown” message so that legitimate correspondents will know that they need to use a different address. Note: AFAICT the only reason to use a catchall address is if you have promiscuously given out addresses in your domain and you've forgotten what those addresses are.

reject address or reject alias or negative alias

Some providers, such as Tuffmail, let you specify specific “reject addresses” that will be rejected (refused) at the SMTP-level with a “user unknown” or other permanent (5xx) DSN error message. Reject addresses are useful if you use a catchall address, subaddresses, disposable email addresses, or if you want to be able to send one-way outgoing-only announcements and use a no-reply From: header (for example, From: no-reply@your.domain, From: do.not.reply@your.domain, or From: bitbucket@your.domain). Important: Rejects or “bounce backs” should be done only at the SMTP level and I suggest that you boycott any provider or product that encourages users to do it after the SMTP handshake. Details about the problems with fake bounces are in this section of the Procmail Quick Start.

SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

SMTP is the protocol that is used to relay mail from one computer to another computer on the Internet. All IMAP service providers offer incoming (receiving) SMTP service so that they can receive their users' incoming mail. However, some IMAP service providers offer outgoing (sending) SMTP service only if a user uses the provider's browser-based IMAP client. On this type of system, a user needs to use another outgoing SMTP server when sending mail from a desktop IMAP client (for example, the SMTP server provided by the user's Internet access provider). If I say that a provider includes SMTP service in The Table or The List below, I am referring to outgoing SMTP service (because incoming SMTP service is always included). Also see SMTP at .

SMTP path

The sequence of computers that an email message goes (“hops”) through in getting from the originating computer to the final receiving computer. Each computer on this path is usually recorded in a Received header line in the message. Note 1: Some computers on this path may not be SMTP servers. For example, the originating computer is often a simple desktop computer and not an SMTP server. Note 2: The target receiving SMTP server(s) for a domain name is specified in the DNS MX record for that domain name (see the definition of MX hosting above). Note 3: It is easy to forge a Received header line and spammers and other bad guys often do. Also see this 2005-July-22 article at NewScientist.com.

reverse DNS record or rDNS record or PTR record

If a numeric IP address can be translated to a host/domain name, it is said to have a “reverse DNS record.” Some SMTP servers, for example AOL, will accept mail from a sending SMTP server only if it has an accurate reverse DNS record. Also see 'Reverse lookup' at .

Tip: To ensure that your outgoing email is not refused or considered spammy by a receiving SMTP server that does rDNS lookups, first use Verify Connecting IP to determine your ultimate sending SMTP server's IP address and then use Reverse DNS Check to check that your ultimate sending SMTP server has an accurate rDNS record. (These browser-based tools are provided by AOL, but they are useful for troubleshooting general non-AOL-specific SMTP issues.) In other words, make sure that outgoing SMTP 2 in the SMTP path below has an rDNS record.

originating computer -> outgoing SMTP 1 -> outgoing SMTP 2 -> receiving SMTP 3 -> recipient's mailbox
                                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                           ultimate sending    MX server for
                                             SMTP server        recipient's 
                                                                domain name

See Also

• Power Pine: Terminology, which discusses the IMAP terms RECENT, SEEN, and UNSEEN.
  
  
• Procmail Quick Start: Terms Used in This Article, which discusses a lot of email terminology including MUA (mail user agent), MSA (mail submission agent), MTA (mail transport agent), and LDA (local delivery agent).
  
  
• Stopping Spam Creating a Stronger, Safer Internet: Glossary (according to this, John R. Levine wrote this Glossary)
  
  
• UW IMAP Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), especially 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, and 1.11 What is the difference between "mailbox" and "folder"?
  
  
• comp.mail.imap:
  • 2005 April 21: Re: Please clear my doubts in IMAP by Mark Crispin, which discusses the terms mailbox, folder, and mailstore.
    
    
  • 2000 August 23: Terminology: folder, mailbox (Was: IMAP server: Sub folders) by Nancy McGough (that's me), in which I say:

    “We need a term that will give people a picture that they can keep in their head about what's going on without limiting their ability to take advantage of the features of different message storage structures.”

Tools for IMAP Users

What to Look for in an IMAP Client

What to look for in an IMAP client is discussed in

• The University of Michigan's IMAP4 Client Evaluation Criteria
• EmailDiscussions.com > Discussions about Email Services > Email Help Needed! > The Ultimate Mail Client

For me, it's essential that an IMAP client supports secure authentication methods, has the ability to flag (label) IMAP-accessible messages, has powerful sorting and searching options (including full text searching), makes it easy to move messages to any mailbox on any IMAP server (including moving to a mailbox that does not yet exist), lets you open more than one mailbox at the same time, and has the option to store configuration settings and address books remotely (e.g., on an IMAP, LDAP, or IMSP server).

Pine: Local (Desktop) and Server-Based POP, IMAP, NNTP, & ESMTP Client

Even if Pine is not your primary IMAP client, it is a useful backup IMAP client because it has a small footprint, is surprisingly powerful and feature-rich, runs on many platforms, adheres to standards, and is available gratis (free of charge). I have more reasons why Pine is an Essential Companion to Other Mail Clients and Tools on my main Pine page.

Setting Up Pine for Multiple IMAP Accounts

To set up Pine to access, manage, and search mailboxes on multiple IMAP accounts, you can use Pine's built-in configuration screens, which are available by typing MS (Main > Setup) in Pine, or you can directly edit your pinerc configuration file. It is cumbersome and confusing to edit the incoming-folders and folder-collections variables from within the Pine Configuration screens so I recommend that you do the following.

Exit Pine and make a backup copy of your pinerc file. Then open your pinerc using your favourite editor, such as vim or  pico -w  (the -w flag ensures that pico does not automatically insert any line breaks), and then

1. Add your INBOX specification at the service provider to your Pine incoming-folders list.
2. Add your mailstore specification at the service provider to your Pine folder-collections list.
3. Make sure that enable-incoming-folders is listed in your feature-list.

After you add these to your pinerc, restart Pine, type L to go to your Pine folder list, and read & manage these remote IMAP-accessible mailboxes.

Another way to go to a mailbox in Pine is to type  G (for Go) and enter the full IMAP specification of a mailbox, for example:    G {www.fastmail.fm/user=UID/ssl}INBOX

I have many more tips for using Pine on Infinite Ink's

• All About Pine
• Changing Your From Header in Pine; especially useful is the Roles section
• Power Pine; especially useful are the sections:
  • Setting Up Local, IMAP, and NNTP Collections
  • Using the incoming-folders Collection (aka Pine Bookmarks)
  • Creating a PASSFILE for Storing Passwords
• Compartmentalizing and Sharing Your Pine Configuration
• Links to other Infinite Ink and world-wide Pine-related pages (sections of the All About Pine page)

Local (Desktop) IMAP Clients

In addition to Pine (previous section), there are many other clients that you can run on your desktop (or laptop) and use to access mailboxes on an IMAP server, including the following.

• The premier GUI IMAP client, ISAMET Mulberry, is powerful, robust, standards-compliant, runs on Linux, MS Windows, Mac OS, & Solaris, and was “designed from the ground up to take advantage of [IMAP].” For Mulberry discussion, see the Mulberry mailing list, which is available at the following IMAP URL:
  

  imap://;AUTH=ANONYMOUS@imap.cyrusoft.com/mulberry.discuss
  

  One way to access this is to use Pine's -url command-line argument, for example:
  

  pine -url imap://imap.cyrusoft.com/mulberry.discuss

  Mulberry costs $35.95 and is well worth it if you are, or want to be, a power IMAP user.
  
  See Also
  • comparison of Mulberry and Pine on my All About Pine page.
  •  my del.icio.us bookmarks related to Mulberry
  
  
  
  
• The Mozilla project includes two IMAP clients: Mozilla Mail/News, which is part of SeaMonkey (Mozilla Suite), and Mozilla Thunderbird, which is a stand-alone messaging client. Both are free (gratis), open-source, and run on Mac, Unix, and MS Windows. For how to get around some of Mozilla's IMAP idiosyncracies, see Using IMAP with Mozilla and this thread at EmailDiscussions.com. If you want to help improve Mozilla's IMAP, see the MozIMAP forum, especially the message MozIMAP enhancement suggestions.
  
  See Also
  • comparison of SeaMonkey (Mozilla Suite) & Thunderbird and Pine on my All About Pine page.
  •  my del.icio.us bookmarks related to Mozill are at del.icio.us/Deflexion.com/ under the following tags: Messaging/Clients/Thunderbird, Messaging/Clients/Moz, Moz/Extensions, and Browsers/Moz/Extensions (I need to consolidate these!)
  
  
  
  
• Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express (OE), and Entourage all support IMAP but have problems, some of which are discussed in
  • Slipstick Systems: IMAP Accounts section of Internet Mail Issues with Microsoft Outlook
  • IMAP mailing-list message Re: OUTLOOK 2K+ your imap server closed the connection error message.
  • comp.mail.imap message Re: A good IMAP tutorial?
  Of these three Microsoft IMAP clients, OE is significantly better at IMAP than the other two.
  
  
  

The above is a list of the most popular desktop IMAP clients, but it is certainly not a complete list. Many more IMAP clients are listed and discussed at the links in Other Lists of IMAP Clients, which is in the section below the next section.

Server-Based IMAP Clients

In addition to ssh-accessible Pine (described above), there are many other IMAP clients or gateways that are hosted on a server and can be used to access any IMAP-accessible mailbox, including:

• mail2web.com -- Web interface to any IMAP or POP accessible mailbox. Make sure you use the HTTPS secure login screen and choose the IMAP4 radio button. More than 14 million users. Also see their mail2wap.com service.  Question: Does anyone know if mail2web encrypts both the connection from your web browser to mail2web and the connection from mail2web to your IMAP server?
  
  
• xs2mail.com -- check your mail on any POP3 or IMAP account; free and premium accounts.
  
  
• e-mol.com -- Web interface to any IMAP or POP accessible mailbox. I don't think they support secure access, but please let me know if they do (or don't).
  
  
• n-ary's WebM@il
  
  
• mollymail.com
  
  
• Cyrusoft's SilkyMail is “the smoothest mail client in a browser” and has “the most complete IMAP capabilities available in a webmail client.”
  
  
• Minter Software's VisualMail can be set up to access external IMAP servers. Their VisualOffice also provides powerful anti-spam features (including TMDA), calendar functions, alerts & notifications, tasks management, bookmarks, file storage, and extensive customization options. MailSnare.net, which is described in The Table below, and the providers listed here offer VisualOffice.
  
  
• @Mail WebMail System -- “Users can choose to read email from any external POP3 / IMAP server on the Internet.”
  
  
• WebPine can access external IMAP mailboxes and share address books and configuration files with any desktop or ssh-accessible Pine. MyUW.net (aka alumni.washington.edu), which is described in Non-Public IMAP Service Providers (Alumni Associations, etc.) below, offers WebPine.

Many service providers include a webmail client that you can use to access mailboxes that reside on their system. If you know of any provider (other than MyUW.net, which is already listed below) that has a webmail client set up so that users can use it to access any — including external — IMAP-accessible mailboxes, please tell me.

More browser-based IMAP clients are listed and discussed at the links in the next section.

Other Lists and Reviews of IMAP Clients

Each of the following discusses many IMAP clients.

• EmailDiscussions.com: Best email client for IMAP
• EmailDiscussions.com: IMAP under Outlook 2002 - IMAP mail clients in general
• IMAP Partners: IMAP clients -- “Covered here are the quirks, peculiarities, deficiencies, etc. of each individual client, with the aim of either helping you with the client of your choice or selecting a client.”
• SortOnce.com: IMAP email program configuration and usage guides
• webhostingtalk.com forum thread What's A Good E-mail Cilent For IMAP
• Comité Réseau des Universités (CRU) HTTP Mail User Agent Inventory - includes 55 entries, many of which support IMAP
• Robin Whittle's Email access via the Web – a listing of software
• The IMAP Connection: Products Supporting IMAP
• Wikipedia.org: List of email clients and Comparison of email clients

IMAP Servers

• imap.org: IMAP Products and Services
• Network Computing: Interactive Buyer's Guide: Mail On The Map: IMAP Messaging Solutions By Dan Backman, Internet Mail Servers Part ll (April 1, 2002) and this table

Miscellaneous IMAP Tools

• mailutil is a command-line utility that is distributed with the University of Wasington IMAP software and with both Unix- and PC-Pine 4.50 & later. It can check local and IMAP-accessible mailboxes for new messages; can copy or move a mailbox between two IMAP servers or between an IMAP Server and a local system; and can do a lot of other things.
  
  
• John Goerzen's OfflineIMAP -- A tool to provide IMAP support for mail readers that do not support IMAP (or support it poorly). Also, a tool to permit offline reading of mail. Provides full bi-directional synchronization of mail repositories. Provides a fault-tolerant synchronization protocol with full consideration of IMAP protocol. OfflineIMAP's multithreaded synchronization algorithm performs between 10 and 60 times faster than many mail readers' internal IMAP support and it can be used even with mail readers that support IMAP already. There are five available user interface modules, including scripted execution, an interactive terminal interface, and GUI interfaces.
  
  
• Roger Binns' IMAP Spam Begone (isbg) -- script that scans an IMAP mailbox for spam using SpamAssassin and moves spam to another mailbox.
  
  
• Lefteris Chatzibarbas's IMAPFilter.
  
  
• Pete Maclean's MailRelayer, which offers Internet remote access to email stored on PCs, and Maclean IMAP, an IMAP Server Engine for MS Windows.
  
  
• David Harris's Mercury Mail Transport System is a comprehensive mail server for Windows and NetWare networks that includes an IMAP server, a powerful content control management system for handling unwanted mail, support for external tasks such as virus scanning and archiving, fully-programmable automatic reply logic and much more.
  
  
• Toltec Connector is middleware that enables Microsoft Outlook to use an IMAP4 server while still using the functionality of the “Corporate or Workgroup” mode instead of “Internet Only” mode. This exciting product provides Microsoft Outlook with the ability to use an IMAP4 mailbox as an Outlook information store. This information store can hold any Outlook item and is not just limited to messages. You will now be able to share calendar information, individual folders and contacts with supported IMAP4 servers. Most of the IMAP4 servers are open source and runs on a variety of operating systems including Linux. This significantly reduces the total cost of ownership to the company.
  
  
• Bynari's InsightConnector for Outlook allows MS Outlook to use an IMAP server to store messages, calendar events, contacts and continue to be interoperable with MS Exchange Server. Note that this works via Bynari's “Insight Server" which is a package of Postfix + Cyrus + Apache + ProFTPd and a web-based management interface. Also see the article InsightConnector: Turning an IMAP Server into a Full Platform by Sue Mosher at Exchange & Outlook Administrator.
  
  
• Brighten Your Outlook—Rethink Exchange: Build a smarter, cost-effective IT environment with Steltor's Exchange Alternative.
  
  
• Kolab Project -- Free software groupware solution that uses Cyrus IMAP, Postfix, OpenLDAP, and the KDE PIM packages to store contacts, notes and calendar entries on the IMAP server.
  
  
• OpenGroupware.org (OGo) -- Open source groupware server to integrate with the leading open source office suite products and all the leading groupware clients running across all major platforms, and to provide access to all functionality and data through open XML-based interfaces and APIs. For more info, see the FAQ.
  
  
• I list many tools for Syncing and Slurping Mailboxes on the All About Pine page.
  
  
• I list many Email Notification Tools in the Procmail Quick Start.
  
  
• Search Freshmeat.net for IMAP projects.
  
  

Service Providers

Reasonably-Priced and Free IMAP Service Providers

What's in The Table

Some providers in the table provide a full range Internet services, including mail hosting, web hosting, Usenet news access, dial-in access, shell access, and more; some provide only mail hosting; most provide POP as well as IMAP access to messages; some provide a web-based mail client; some provide web-based tools for collecting messages from external accounts; some let users write their own Procmail or Sieve recipes. To find out details about a provider, follow the links to their site.

Default INBOX, Default Sent Mailbox, and Personal Mailstore Specifications

In the third column in The Table, I give the specification for the account's personal mailstore, the default “Sent” mailbox, and the default INBOX. These can be copied & pasted into your pinerc file, which is discussed above, or adapted for use in other mail clients. For many of these I have guessed the specifications based on information that I got from telnetting to the server (described below), and on what I know about how various IMAP servers are usually configured.

The specification for the personal mailstore is where your IMAP-accessible mailboxes, but not necessarily your primary INBOX, are stored. For Cyrus and Courier IMAP servers, a user's personal mailstore often resides under the “INBOX.” hierarchy and for a UW IMAP server, they often reside in a subdirectory of $HOME named mail or Mail.

    {imap.server.name/user=UID}#allfolders.INBOX.[] 
    

The /ssl, /tls, and /secure Qualifiers

In some of the specifications in The Table below, I use qualifiers within the squiggly brackets to ensure secure IMAP authentication. The /secure qualifier tells Pine to use CRAM-MD5 or another secure authentication method and /ssl and /tls tell Pine to encrypt the entire session, including the authentication. Details about these qualifier are in the comp.mail.pine thread about Questions about SSL, SASL, CRAM-MD5, etc.

The /tls (Transport Layer Security) qualifier is available in Pine 4.40 & higher; the /ssl (Secure Sockets Layer) qualifier is available in PC-Pine 4.20 & higher and Unix Pine 4.30 & higher. PC-Pine is pre-built with TLS/SSL support but Unix Pine needs to be built with TLS/SSL support.

If you use Mulberry as your IMAP client and want to be able to do secure authentication, you need to download and install the Mulberry crypto installer. The secure-authentication part of the crypto package is free (gratis), but the other part, which includes PGP, GPG, and S/MIME plug-ins, requires a payment of $4 (after a 30 day trial).

If I have left /ssl, /tls, or /secure out of a provider's specification below and it in fact works, please tell me. Also, if I put it in and it doesn't work, let me know that too!

^† Recommendation Icons

My primary goal in creating and maintaining this page is to find a good mail and web hosting provider for myself. Back in the 1990s, I had such a provider, best.com, but they no longer exist and now, after much research, I have realized that 1) there will probably never again be a provider with such a great constellation of smart and talented people (e.g, Matt Dillon) and 2) it is now very hard to find a provider that is good at both mail and web hosting.

For most people who are looking for robust managed mail and web hosting, I recommend that you get two providers: one for mail hosting and one for web hosting. The providers that I currently ( 15-Dec-2005 ) recommend are labeled as follows on this page.

		Mail-hosting provider that I recommend based on my research
		Web-hosting provider that I recommend based on my research
		Provider that I use and highly recommend
		Provider that I recommend you avoid (used mainly for providers who have lost users' email)

^† How The Table is Ordered

Someone asked me about the ordering of the table, which I agree looks pretty random. Here's the algorithm I use to get the Sort key (first column).

1. lowest level account
2. one year pre-payment, including discount for annual payment
3. add setup fee
4. convert to US dollars (US $)
5. divide by number of megabytes of IMAP-accessible storage space

Free accounts all have a sort key of zero and are sorted by Storage Space, from highest to lowest. For the providers that have the same sort key (or the same storage space if they are free), I list the providers who send ads to their users at the bottom and the ones who support secure IMAP access or give Unix shell acess at the top. In the ideal world, I'd let you, the reader, change the sort key on the fly and I'd use two years rather than one so that the sort would more accurately represent providers who charge a one-time fee for extra storage space.

Of course, when you are choosing a provider, you should consider a lot of factors other than simply “Price per MB per Year.” See What to Look For in an IMAP Service Provider near the bottom of this page for other features that I think are important.

Translation and Conversion

• To translate a site, try Babel Fish or Google Language Tools or FreeTranslation or WorldLingo Online Translator or any of the tools mentioned in this Google Answers thread
• To convert a currency, try xe.com, ft.com, or oanda.com

THE TABLE

If you know the Pine incoming-folders, default-fcc, or folder-collections specification, amount of IMAP-accessible storage space, or fees at these or any other IMAP provider, please let me know and I'll include them on this page.

The List — 249 More Reasonably-Priced IMAP Service Providers

In addition to the more than 100 IMAP providers that I discuss in The Table above, this section lists a couple hundred more IMAP providers that I have not yet added to The Table.

1. 10tohost.com -- virus filtering, $2.00/10 MB/month
2. 1and1.com (aka 1und1.de) -- FAQ; “3.5 million customers on paid services”; injects the original envelope recipient in an Envelope-To header; backups but no customer-requested restores; also see this EMD thread
3. 4web-space.com -- I read in a discussion forum that they support IMAP, but I don't see this mentioned on their site
4. 65535.net / jvds.com -- cPanel
5. 852.net -- site is available in Chinese or English; located in Hong Kong
6. 9y.com -- 2 MB free, Premium Accounts, “Transparent, end-to-end 2048 bit encryption”; affiliated with Hushmail.com
7. accudomains.com -- Email account plans, domain name registrar
8. ace-host.net
9. actadivina.com Freeform and pre-designed packages -- Cyrus IMAP
10. addaction.net
11. affordablehost.com -- cPanel; Pre-Sales Q & A > Do you support IMAP?; supports SPF as of 2004 -Sep-14
12. aim.com -- free 2000 MB (will eventually offer unlimited storage), web-based client displays ads, announced 2005-May-12; also see this thread at EMD, this blog by an AOL employee, the aol.com listing below, and my AOL/AIM-related bookmarks at del.icio.us / Deflexion.com / HostingProviders / AOL
13. ald.net
14. aliencamel.com -- “Unlimited Email Storage” (might be a reason to Look OUT), Australian company; also see this EMD thread
15. all2all.org -- Twig webmail
16. aol.com and aol.co.uk (and many other countries) -- AOL's Open Mail Access, which includes access to their IMAP and SMTP (but not POP) servers using any mail client, made its world-wide debut on 2004 April 5; supports SPF; for details see Accessing the AOL Mail System using IMAP & Authenticated SMTP: An Unofficial Guide , Can I use a third-party email program with my AOL email?, and F.A.Q UNIVERSAL E-MAIL AND NEWSGROUPS WHATEVER THE ISP YOU USE (AOL INCLUDED); Warning: AOL expires old messages off of their IMAP server and the AOL IMAP server does not support the IMAP SEARCH command. Also see the aim.com listing above and my AOL/AIM-related bookmarks at del.icio.us / Deflexion.com / HostingProviders / AOL.
17. alterhosting.com -- Courier IMAP, Majordomo mailing lists
18. assortedinternet.com -- cPanel, SquirrelMail, SpamAssassin, Unix shell access, MailMan mailing lists, also see their IMAP page
19. atjeu.com -- cPanel
20. austindev.com -- cPanel
21. avahost.com -- Courier IMAP, cPanel
22. bgxmail.net -- "The World's First FREE 10GB Email Service," discussion about this provider is banned at EMD
23. bigfoot.com -- IMAP seems to be available on Premium and Ultra plans but I cannot find the name of their IMAP server on their site
24. bigimap.com -- Cyrus IMAP, $10/512 MB/month, $12/1 GB/month, $16/2 GB/month, $20/3 GB/month, plus addressing, backups, & more features
25. bitserve.com
26. blogomania.com -- cPanel, exim MTA, SpamAssassin, SSH access upon request for Basic Plan, “370 clients and growing”
27. bluehome.net -- free/gratis, SquirrelMail, powered by Mac OS X Server, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Procmail, also see this message at EMD
28. bluehost.com -- cPanel, Does Bluehost support IMAP?
29. burntmail.com -- Courier IMAP, $15/1001 MB/year, no bandwidth limit (might be a reason to Look OUT)
30. britain.net (or pla.net or isleofman.net) -- MailSite IMAP server (mail.britain.net), SMTP AUTH, £9.99/?? MB/year
31. california.com and its national counterpart econetwork.net -- CommuniGate Pro messaging server; server-side filtering; Internet connectivity (dial-in, DSL, etc.); they donate 20% of profits to non profit organizations chosen by clients and provide nonprofits with free web pages and internet service
32. caravanmail.net - 100 MB free
33. CIHost.com Shared Unix Hosting and Shared Windows Hosting (aka unixhost.com) -- sued America Online, discussion about the lawsuit and about CIHost.com are at Slashdot.org in AOL Sued For Over-Zealous Blocking, which includes discussion and links about its sordid history including this link and this quote: “For those thinking that CIHost sounds like some insane overlitigous company that tries to use lawsuits to make its profit... You're right. :)”; the Witty Worm took down some of the CI Host servers in March 2004
34. clearlight.com
35. colondot.net -- Exim MTA, SAUCE filtering, FreeBSD system
36. contrasthost.com -- cPanel
37. cornerhost.com -- $50/500 MB/year (basic), $100/1000 MB/year (script), $200/2500 MB/year (shell), IMAP over SSL, SMTP AUTH over SSL, SquirrelMail, ssh for shell accounts, Procmail, Red Hat Linux, FAQ/mail wiki page, off-site status blog, innercircle mailing list; many users, including BenHammersley.com
38. crnc.net -- H-Sphere or cPanel control panel, forum, used by del.icio.us, (before you sign up, ask crnc.net if the plan you are interested in includes IMAP)
39. crontime.com
40. crystaltech.com -- servers run an MS operating system; IMail 7.13; CRAM-MD5 authentication; virus scanning; backups & restores; webmail; 250 MB mail storage in addition to web storage; ASP/.NET; discussion forums; no ssh???; happy customers
41. ctyme.com (aka marxmail.net) -- exim, SpamAssassin, SquirrelMail, subaddressing, used by Lawrence Lessig as discussed in this 2004-Dec-14 blog item; also see this thread at EMD; planning to switch to Dovecot IMAP
42. cwazy.net (aka cwazy.co.uk, zapo.net) -- 350 MB free, Cyrus IMAP, SquirrelMail, forum; also see this 2005-July-30 EMD message by stevew, a cwazy.net representative
43. cyberbite.com -- Verio reseller; as you can see in the viaVerio Signature Hosting entry in the table above, I use and recommend the Signature Hosting account
44. dathorn.com -- cPanel, $13.50/2 GB/month
45. dbtec-networks.de -- Cyrus IMAP, sendmail, SquirrelMail, Solaris OS, Bynari InsightConnector groupware packages available, site is in German
46. deru.net
47. digitaldaze.com
48. digitalspace.net - the fact that they currently support IMAP is mentioned in the FAQ, but note that they say that IMAP “support is not guaranteed at this time for security reasons”; high price/MB/year
49. DeepMail.com -- Anti-Spam & Anti-Virus Protection; CommuniGate Pro IMAP; $9.95/100 MB/month; +$3.95/+50 MB; daily backups; ¿¿¿restores???
50. dombox.com -- site available in English and German, Swiss Company, related to swissmail.org (see below)
51. domehost.com -- cPanel
52. doorhost.net -- cPanel, Forums, including an Email Forum
53. dr2.net -- cPanel; according to this thread, it is run by a 16 year old
54. eapps.com
55. easynetdial.co.uk -- Brightmail spam filtering
56. econonethosting.com -- forums
57. electric.net --
58. electricmail.com -- Sophos AV
59. enhancedhost.com -- Plesk 6, SquirrelMail
60. enic.cc -- domain name registrar
61. eskimo.com -- UW IMAP, alt SMTP port (2525), LB4S (‡), SquirrelMail, shell access, MindTerm web-based SSH client, Usenet, local NNTP groups (announcements & lobby), discounts for Linux User Group members, discounts & extra storage space for pre-payments, virtual domain discounts if you link to eskimo.com on your web site. Also see Jessamyn West's why eskimo.com? I have recommended Eskimo.com as an Internet access provider and my friends & family who use them are quite happy with their non-corporate friendly service. [Note that until Summer 2004, Eskimo.com used a very old IMAP2bis server.]
62. eumx.net (aka mzplanet.com) -- RoundCube webmail, Support Forum, “We will disable POP3/IMAP access between June 9 and 13 [2005] due to testing and service optimisation.”
63. evenmail.com -- “established in February 2004”; (lots of English language and grammar mistakes on this site)
64. everyhost.com -- related to everybody.org
65. everyone.net -- personal and group accounts; FAQs, including IMAP FAQs; no shared mailboxes
66. ez-web-hosting.com -- cPanel, SpamAssassin, double redundant nightly backup
67. ezrs.com -- SquirrelMail
68. f15.com -- $19.95/1000 MB/year
69. fatcow.com -- in business since 1998
70. fazter.com -- also see this pop-up window and Is This Copyright Infringement? International Email Hosting Company Asks You to be the Judge
71. featureprice.com -- went out of business 21 May 2003 and seems to have been reborn in mid August 2003 with IMAP support; (Here is what I said about the pre 21-May-2003 incarnation of FeaturePrice: the fact that they do not support IMAP is in the Sales FAQ; also see the review of FeaturePrice.com at 10-best-web-site-and-domain-hosting-services.com)
72. fidelityhosting.com
73. finalasp.com -- MS Exchange server, Outlook Web Access, Knowledgebase, $19.95/150 MB/month
74. flashmail.com -- seems to be using NetWin Server Software
75. flexihostings.net -- cPanel, forums
76. focalhosting.com -- they don't say how much space you get!?
77. forest.net -- Postini spam and virus filtering, CommuniGate mail server
78. freedom2surf.net -- Cyrus IMAP (inmail.f2s.com), virus protection updated daily
79. freemail.com.cy
80. freemail.nx.cninfo.net -- 5 MB free, site is in Chinese Simplified
81. frontdrive.com
82. fusemail.com -- personal and group accounts, Courier IMAP, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, customized SquirrelMail, RSS feeds, lots of plans including $19.96/350 MB/year and $71.88/1250 MB/year; no bandwidth limits (might be a reason to Look OUT); “Block 100% of Spam and Viruses” (might be another reason to Look OUT); shared mailboxes, address books, calendars for group accounts; FuseMail Forums including a Checking Mail with IMAP forum; Bug database; address-book greenlisting; no headers that state original envelope addresses (discussed below); server-side saved search folders; no support for IMAP keywords, address book does not support distribution lists; “I [Site Admin] am not certain that the server-side sorting functions can be utilized here at FuseMail at this time [2005 April 15]”; referral program; also see Fused Personal Basic Plan vs. Fused Personal Free Plan in the FuseMail forum, the EMD thread Yahoo terminated 2 of my accounts - is it because of FuseMail??, and this, this, and this EMD thread; Question: Do they do backups & restores???
83. FutureQuest.net -- Courier IMAP, qmail MTA, no access to .qmail files, SpamAssassin, forums, also see the User Reviews and Ratings of FutureQuest at WebHostingRatings.com
84. geekisp.com -- Courier IMAP over SSL, SquirrelMail, Qmail MTA, TMDA, TMDA-ofmipd, SpamAssassin, OpenBSD, domain hosting
85. gnu-darwin.org -- SquirrelMail; if you donate $15 or are a GNU-Darwin contributor, you get 1 year access to a full featured email account with a user@gnu-darwin.org email address; supports SSL; GNU-Darwin shell access; free 1-month trial subscription
86. gradwell.com -- Courier IMAP, virus scanning, SpamAssassin for an extra fee, SMTP AUTH, +£10.00 (plus VAT)/+100 MB/year, text (non-binary) Usenet access
87. gravital.net -- Courier IMAP, TMDA C/R filtering, FreeBSD
88. gsp.com -- LB4S, also see Virtual Server E-Mail, (they seem to be Verio resellers, which is a good thing IMHO)
89. homepageuniverse.com -- Plesk control panel, Horde/IMP, SquirrelMail, forums, including a DomainMail forum, “looking into the possibility of offering MS Exchange”
90. hostcolor.com -- UW IMAP
91. hostdepartment.com -- daily backups, a restore is $25, Horde/IMP, HostDepartment.com supports The Horde Project
92. hostforweb.com -- cPanel, they state “Procmail support” but someone emailed me and told me that HostForWeb.com no longer lets users use Procmail, support forums
93. hostgator.com -- cPanel
94. hostgo.com
95. hostica.com -- SquirrelMail, IlohaMail, SqWebMail, Horde/IMP, also see Email Support
96. hosting365.ie -- also see I love my webhost, you should too
97. hostingmatters.com (aka hostmatters.com) -- UW IMAP, Horde/IMP, Neomail, Squirrelmail, SpamAssassin, cPanel, Fantastico; "Shell access is available on request for supported packages"; Backups; Offsite emergency status page; Email Forum; as discussed in this thread, their IMAP server is slow; as blogged here and here, recommend by Shelley Powers of Burningbird.net; as blogged here, used by Teal Sunglasses
98. hostingworks.com -- Courier IMAP, 30-minute login before SMTP (‡)
99. hostit365.com
100. hostpacket.net -- SpamAssassin
101. hotbox.ru (aka mail333.com) in Russian or English -- 20 MB free
102. hp.com -- Premium account supports IMAP, $11.95/100 MB/month, MS Exchange Server
103. hub.org -- $99.99/256 MB/year, Cyrus IMAP, Horde/IMP, Sieve, spam tagging, virus filtering, FreeBSD shell access, pine, unlimited domain hosting included
104. hummingbirdhosting.com -- domain registrar, the Setting up a User (email account) using the Ensim Control Panel mentions IMAP
105. hushmail.com -- PGP compatible secure email; IMAP access available in Premium and Business plans; also see IMAP Access in the Hushmail Help system; started by Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP
106. i12.com
107. i8k.com
108. icdsoft.com -- IMAP over SSL, Courier IMAP, SpamAssassin, login before SMTP (‡)
109. icmail.net -- 1000 MB free
110. ideanode.com -- SquirrelMail, Plan Details (for geeks) says “High-Performance IMAP server” (which is not geeky enough for me and makes me wonder what they are hiding; might be a reason to Look OUT)
111. iinet.com
112. iMagineis.com -- Red Hat Linux; UW IMAP
113. imap4all.com -- Bronze/Silver/Gold comparison table, extra space is +€1/250 MB/month, IMAP over SSL, SMTP AUTH, backups, restores cost €100, Horde/IMP, 15-day trial, Dutch company; also see this 2004-July-16 EMD message from the IMAP4all Administrators
114. impacthosting.com -- MailSite IMAP, virus scanning
115. indoglobal.com -- Courier IMAP, SMTP AUTH, virus protection, optional SpamAssassin and/or C/R filtering, ssh access, WebDAV, Indonesian company (I think), U.S.-based servers
116. infinology.com Virtual Private Server plans -- webmail, sendmail MTA, I don't think their low-level accounts support IMAP, but this makes me think their high-level accounts do
117. inmail24.com
118. innerhost.com -- UW IMAP, sendmail, .Net
119. internetconnection.net -- Courier IMAP
120. inwa.net -- Courier IMAP, qmail MTA, Horde/IMP webmail, located in Washington state
121. io.com (formerly "Illuminati Online") -- Internet connectivity, five levels of spam filtering protection (including SA), SquirrelMail, Mailman mailing list hosting, cool Staff page
122. izymail.com -- 15-day free trial, $6.05 one-time signup fee + $13.25/6 months, can access AOL, MSN, Hotmail, & Yahoo mail
123. jager.com -- free; 3 MB storage space
124. jiffynet.net -- FAQs, the table says “IMAP Mail - Horde Mail”, but they seem to be more focused on “POP Accounts”
125. KangaWeb.com -- the fact that they support IMAP is in the Email FAQ; weekly backups, SpamBoxer
126. ktb.net -- Dovecot IMAP, shell access, procmail
127. laughingsquid.net -- Courier IMAP, Horde/IMP Webmail, IMAP over SSL, Email FAQ; as discussed here, laughingsquid.net is by boing boing pal Scott Beale
128. likk.net -- free (gratis), Zope hosting (?), 100% Microsoft free
129. location7.com -- $35 (£20+VAT in the UK) / year / 100 MB, Courier IMAP, FAQ, Virus and Spam Filtering, Mail Provider Comparison Chart
130. loftmail.com -- $35.40/1000 MB/year (Corporate), free/gratis accounts do not support IMAP, Cyrus IMAP over SSL, Horde/IMP, server-based filtering via Sieve, ManageSIEVE protocol, no headers that record original envelope addresses, backups for all, free/gratis restores for Corporate accounts, OpenBSD, optional greylisting, maximum email size is 200 (!) MB for Corporate accounts
131. lunarpages.com -- Horde/IMP, cPanel, Fantastico Script Library, “SSH is disabled on all servers except the dedicated hosting plan and enterprise plan which has limited SSH support.”; lots of forums including a forum about email
132. lycos.co.uk -- free and pay accounts include “HTTP/IMAP” (I do not know if this means you can use any IMAP client to access your Lycos.co.uk mail -- does anyone know???)
133. macosx.com (aka macsrule.com) -- virus scanning; SpamAssassin upon request; Courier IMAP; SMTP AUTH, SquirrelMail, Horde/IMP, Email FAQ, $9.95/yr for 5 MB; 1.99 sort key^†
134. macrefuge.com -- according to their FAQ, they offer IMAP but not WebDAV (so it's not truly a replacement for DOTmac)
135. macteens.net -- 1 gig free, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, support forums
136. magicaldesk.com -- SyncML, also see this thread at EmailDiscussions.com
137. mail.az in Azerbaijani, Russian, and English -- 10 MB free
138. mail15.com / mail333.com -- 15 MB free, IMAP over SSL, SMTP over SSL, ad free, no tag lines
139. mail2web.com -- $1.99/200 MB/month, based on Microsoft Exchange
140. mailandfiles.com -- Courier IMAP, no outgoing SMTP, $5/50 MB/month
141. mailfetch.net -- unlimited bandwidth (might be a reason to Look OUT); seems to be a FuseMail reseller (another reason to Look OUT)
142. mailstates.com - this site crashed Opera so I'm wary of them; requires Java
143. mcm.net -- 4 MB free, in French
144. mediatemple.net -- as discussed here, used by TheManInBlue.com
145. memset.com -- cPanel
146. mi8.com -- Microsoft Exchange Hosting & Outsourcing, includes MAPI, POP/IMAP, and OWA (Outlook Web Access)
147. microneil.com -- $2/mailbox/month + $0.25/MB/month, virus and spam filtering
148. mintchaos.com
149. modwest.com -- Cyrus IMAP, ssh access, nice Knowledge Base system with user comments
150. .mp (ccTLD of Northern Mariana Islands) -- 1 Gig combined IMAP/web storage; Personal-Site (PS) FAQ; Commercial-Site (CS) FAQ; PS Terms of Use; also see the thread Dot MP Up and Running at RussellBeattie.com; make sure you read their Terms and other legal documents before you pay
151. mstrata.com -- Courier IMAP, non-optional spam and virus protection, $20 Setup Fee + $10/100 MB/month, you need your own domain name
152. myacen.com virtual (enterprise level) and reseller hosting -- SpamAssassin installed; this discussion thread on their forum makes me think they don't grok IMAP
153. myecom.net -- 10 MB free
154. myownemail.info -- 2 MB free
155. mythic-beasts.com -- IMAP over SSL, Exim MTA, procmail, SMTP AUTH,
156. mywebwizards.net -- SSH access
157. N1hosting.com -- list of installed software versions, including IMAP software, is here
158. nasstar.com -- UK company
159. neathosting.net -- cPanel, recommended by Natalie Downe
160. neomailbox.com -- see also Service features and specifications; personal subdomain, IMAP over SSL, SMTP over SSL, Razor spam detection, ClamAV virus detection, Open BSD, $39.95/150 MB/year, bandwidth limited to 200 MB/month, extra bandwidth for a fee
161. netservers.co.uk -- virus filtering
162. networld.com -- CommuniGate Pro
163. Networth Enterprises -- SpamAssassin; NetWorth Enterprises donates to evolt.org 10% of hosting and reseller services revenues paid by evolt.org members (“evolt.org is a world community for web developers, promoting the mutual free exchange of ideas, skills and experiences”)
164. neucomm.com -- dial-in access in US and Canada; Courier IMAP
165. neureal.com
166. newatech.com -- “space used by your mail accounts... is unmetered”; company located in Seattle and Nepal
167. nexpoint.net
168. nightskyhosting.com -- qmail, TMDA
169. ninthwonder.com
170. no-more-spam.de -- in German, TMDA (Tagged Message Delivery Agent ) C/R filtering
171. nwnexus.com
172. nyi.net -- also see their packages; According to Netcraft.com, nyi.net was the #1 Most reliable and fastest hosting company site during June 2003
173. oeone.net -- WebDAV, free 60 day trial
174. Omnis Network
175. opensourcehost.com -- cPanel, SpamAssassin, Drupal hosting, special offer if you set your Referral ID to drupal; another special offer if you type CMS as the referrer
176. ot.com -- $15/100MB/month, 5 login IDs, unlimited addresses @yourdomain
177. perso.be -- according to this message at EMD, they use IMP based Alinto outsourcing and you get 10 MB
178. personalsites.org -- cPanel
179. phatcom.net -- Courier IMAP, 100 (or 50?) MB free, SquirrelMail, SpamAssassin, no outgoing SMTP
180. ploghost.com -- cPanel, no ssh or telnet access, company in Philippines, servers in Europe and U.S. (I think)
181. pobox.com (aka rightbox.com and onepost.net) -- "Mailstore" (which includes IMAP) account is $50/100 MB/year; Postfix, reject addresses and more
182. promptpost.com (or veloxmail.com; squeml.com; mc2post.com; ezeml.com; icaremail.com; swifteml.com; wingedmail.com; epo.st; email1.st) -- 130 MB free, donations accepted, Courier IMAP, SquirrelMail, discussion groups, can host at most 100-150 active users, one-man operation (the last two are reasons to beware IMHO)
183. python-hosting.com
184. rcthost.com -- cPanel
185. redmail.com -- +£99.95/ +1 GB / year
186. redpin.com -- Courier IMAP, qmail, exim, SpamAssassin, no virus filters
187. remarkablehosting.com -- SMTP AUTH, FAQ
188. revisemedia.com -- Wordpress hosting
189. rt19.com -- UW IMAP
190. rhyton.com -- ssh access, +$1/+1 MB/month
191. sandershosting.com
192. sentinare.com -- according to this page, they use Maia Mailguard
193. serverintellect.com -- SmarterMail webmail, Microsoft servers
194. sh3lls.net
195. shiremail.com -- £3.50/10 MB/month
196. shore.net (primus) -- SMTP over SSL/TLS, exim, Using Pine to get Mail, Comparing POP and IMAP
197. shutmail.com -- 3000 MB free, also see this thread at EMD
198. sify.com -- 15 MB, DomainKeys support, located in India
199. simplicato.com -- Courier IMAP, Web Mail, ClamAV, SpamAssassin, FAQ, IMAP vs. POP3 by Brett B Shere (this article needs to be edited but it shows that they are IMAP fans)
200. site5.com -- cPanel, not much info about IMAP although it is listed in their comparison table, Horde/IMP, NeoMail, SquirrelMail, LB4S (‡), Knowledge Base, Forums, Fantastico, Ruby on Rails, affiliate program, “IMAP folders are allowed, it's the IMAP subfolders that aren't allowed.” (might be a reason to Look OUT)
201. sitelutions.com -- SpamAssassin, mail-only accounts available, Package Comparison Matrix, no ssh access on shared hosting accounts
202. slashmail.org -- “for individual use only,” UW IMAP over SSL, Sendmail, SquirrelMail, DSPAM, Clam AV, & more, alt SMTP port (225), traditional Unix mbox format mailboxes, “No E-mail Storage Limits!” (might be a reason to Look OUT); affiliated with ucebee.com
203. smileglobal.com -- “20 Email Boxes, 100 MB Storage Per Box, 2 Gig of Total Storage”
204. snailmail.ch -- free, mail.snailmail.ch is using Courier IMAP
205. softflare.com -- qmail
206. speakeasy.net -- Courier IMAP, SMTP AUTH, server-side spam/virus filtering, Usenet news server, also see I hate Mandatory Mail Filtering!!!! - speakeasy.net bites the dust. (was "I hate SpamAsssassin") in gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general
207. spry.com
208. stgeorges.myvnc.com -- 60 MB free, Merak Groupware to sync Contacts/Task List/Calendar/Notes with Microsoft ® Outlook; also see the thread "Just signed up at stgeorges.myvnc.com" at EMD
209. sudio.com -- Plesk control panel, Horde/IMP, also see POP & IMAP Email Account (Mailbox) in the KB, Sudio Inc. contributed a nice skin to the Horde/IMP project
210. superbhosting.net
211. superb.net -- used by Gary Lawrence Murphy
212. surpasshosting.com -- cPanel; Fantastico; Email discussion group (requires log in); as discussed in this blog entry, used by cookingforengineers.com
213. terabolic.com -- Cyrus IMAP, $39.95 / 50 MB / year
214. teramail.com -- SquirrelMail, Postfix, site is in Korean
215. texas.net
216. textdrive.com (aka joyent.com) -- Postfix MTA with plus addressing, Dovecot IMAP but that may change, IMAP over SSL, SMTP over SSL, WebMail (IlohaMail, SquirrelMail, Horde/IMP), SpamAssassin, Webmin control panel, no subaddressing, WebDAV, iCal, FreeBSD, discussion forum, affiliated with Textpattern CMS, supports Textpattern, WordPress, Instiki, Ruby On Rails, and more, $12/300 MB/month, $25/1000 MB/month, or $40/2000 MB/month, shell access, SFTP access (but no FTP access), Procmail, no Pine (which might mean they are not especially supportive of IMAP users); Status blog at status.textdrive.com; backups & restores; “50% of [TextDrive] proceeds go to Rails development”; used by Evan Williams and Keith Devens; Privacy Policy, Safe Harbor Policy; Planning on VPS plans someday; also see the thread Getting very nervous about production reliability / availability in the TextDrive forum, the blog item Bad customer service at rc3.org, and the thread Lingering e-mail problems? (which is about a painful upgrade to an alpha version of Dovecot IMAP). Also see my TextDrive-related bookmarks at del.icio.us / Deflexion.com / HostingProviders / TextDrive.
217. thebestisp.com -- $29.95/300 MB/month
218. thehostingcompany.us
219. thoughtlocker.net -- ssh access
220. tigahost.com -- sendmail, located in Hong Kong
221. tilted.com -- located in Forest Park, IL, USA
222. tiscali.com -- 10 MB free; Internet connectivity (dial-up, broadband) in many countries, for example in the UK via tiscali.co.uk
223. totalchoicehosting.com (aka TCH) -- cPanel, Horde/IMP, SquirrelMail, NeoMail, exim MTA, no SSH (as of 2003 May 16), Jail Shell, also see Procmail/spamassassin Weirdness in the TCH forums
224. uk2net.com -- Gold account supports IMAP; for warnings, see this thread at EmailDiscussions.com
225. ukshells.co.uk -- Courier IMAP, transitioning from RedHat to Slackware Linux, SpamAssassin, procmail, SSH access for “shell account” plans, also see forums
226. ultradesign.com -- 20 MB per mailbox (makes me wonder if they grok IMAP); Mac OS X servers; Remote Administration, Webmail, Autoresponders, Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam; owner affiliated with Spamhaus.org
227. unitedemailsystems.com -- 3 GB free, forum, also see this 2005-July-30 thread at EMD
228. valai.net
229. valueweb.net -- Sending/Receiving Email mentions IMAP; Brightmail spam filtering; PC Magazine Editors' Choice (25 March 2003)
230. venturesonline.com
231. vervehosting.com -- Horde, Neomail, spam & virus filtering (including SA), cPanel
232. virtualnames.co.uk -- spam filtering, 30-minute LB4S (‡)
233. viperhost.com -- cPanel
234. visi.com -- Courier IMAP over SSL, Internet connectivity, Authenticated SMTP over SSL, Procmail, Postini, SpamAssassin, procmail, ~35,000 Usenet newsgroups, nn newsreader
235. visitmail.com -- in French, UW IMAP
236. vnmails.com -- mail.vnmails.com seems to be a Merak IMAP server, 10 MB free
237. vonetwork.net -- cPanel
238. voxel.net
239. webhost4life.com -- .NET
240. webintellects.com -- as discussed here, the patch command is not available
241. webmail.us (aka excedent.com) -- $30/1024 MB/year, business and user plans, 99.99% uptime guarantee (but make sure you read the SLA section of the TOS), Courier IMAP, Postfix MTA, ClamAV, SpamAssassin, customized SquirrelMail, Red Hat Linux, “Certain administration features of this site require Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher and will not function with most versions of Netscape.”; “There is a $100 fee per mailbox for data restores.”; “Is there any chance of webmail.us implementing greylisting? ... probably not anytime soon.” (might be a reason to Look OUT); also see the blog of Webmail.us CEO, Pat Matthews, The Webmail Blog, the blog of Bill Boebel, the CTO of Webmail.us, and the blog of Mike Bulman, a Webmail.us team lead; As of May 2005, ~5500 customers, excellent customer service
242. webservehosting.com - cPanel and Fantastico
243. wikidev.net -- 12.93€/3000 MB/month; Cyrus IMAP, Horde/IMP webmail, Debian/Gnu Linux, MediaWiki hosting; ~27 customers (including me :-)); run by MediaWiki developer Gabriel Wicke, who you can learn about here, here and here
244. xensia.net -- Courier IMAP, IMAP over TLS/SSL, SMTP AUTH, Webmail, Control Panel, user-configurable SpamAssassin, servers & corporation located in UK
245. xlinternet.com -- Ensim, SquirrelMail, Majordomo, used by Wikitravel.org
246. xmission.com -- Internet connectivity, SpamAssassin, Horde/IMP Webmail, xmission.* newsgroups, 7 MB email quota (I think this quota is only for the primary INBOX and not for other mailboxes in your IMAP mailstore)
247. zettai.net -- SpamAssassin, virus protection, SquirrelMail, Courier IMAP, Zope hosting, WebDAV, Email FAQ, How to Use the E-mail System, Backups FAQ, no Procmail, no Sieve, Forums
248. zipmail.com -- $11.99/50 MB/year
249. zzz.com -- Internet connectivity

Non-Public IMAP Service Providers (Alumni Associations, etc.)

Many institutions offer their alumni a permanent email address and email forwarding. The following also provides IMAP services for their alumni.

MyUW.net (or alumni.washington.edu or u.washington.edu) -- UW IMAP over TLS, c-client MBX mailbox format (which is more efficient than traditional Unix mbox mailbox format), SMTP AUTH over TLS, authenticated NNTP (Usenet) over SSL, Junk email (spam) filtering, UW fights viruses, WebPine that can access external (non UW) IMAP mailboxes and share address books with any desktop or ssh-accessible Pine, backups & restores, excellent support, $19/1000 MB/month (Premium) or 2 MB free (Complimentary), Premium account includes web hosting, Unix shell (sftp and ssh) access, and dial-up Internet access, available to any former UW student (even if you have not completed a degree), “Your UW e-mail address is yours for life.”

For Power Needs: Outsourcing, Co-Location, and Dedicated-Server Options

If you need lots (gigs) of space or you need to provide IMAP services to lots of users, see

• aktiom.net
• bytemark-hosting.co.uk -- as discussed here, Mark Pilgrim uses Bytemark; referral program; if you decide to sign up, use this link and Bytemark will make a donation to the Debian Project
• ispserver.com
• JohnCompanies.com -- FreeBSD or Linux; 0.20 sort key (0.12 sort key for Open Source Software contributors); +$2.00/+2 GB/month; 10% discount for annual payment; JC does backups & restores for no extra fee, but you need to tell them which directories to back up; also see the JC ad and comments at Kuro5hin.org
• RoseHosting.com -- 0.18 sort key
• Tucows.com has an email reseller plan
• Verio.com has a number of VPS (virtual private server) plans -- I use VPS2, which uses FreeBSD and no NFS (yay!); Verio is expensive but, based on my experience, they are very good; if you sign up with Verio, please let me know so I can "take the credit"!
• Q: comparison shop for dedicated web hosting at Google Answers -- this includes recommendations for providers and discussion about how to find a provider
• User-Mode Linux Hosting Providers listed here and here -- “User-Mode Linux (UML) lets people run a virtual Linux system totally separate from other users of the same machine.”
• Russell Beattie Notebook: What to do about EV1? (2004 March 3) -- the comments include an interesting discussion about various providers
• Ask.MetaFilter.com: What's a good heavy duty webhost? (2005 Nov 07)
•  I am collecting co-location- and dedicated-server-related links at del.icio.us/Deflexion.com/HostingProviders/Colocation and HostingProviders/*

Also some of the providers in The Table above have outsourcing or reseller plans. For example, luxsci.com has a “Private Labeled WebMail” option.

Look Promising, But Do They Do IMAP?

• acmemail.net -- free, IMP webmail client
• addr.com
• BlueDomino.com -- no telnet/ssh access; also see this DreamHost vs. BlueDomino thread
• ChooseYourMail.com
• downtownhost.com
• flashmail.com -- free, CWmail webmail client
• ft.com PersonalOffice
• H2Hosting.com / 59Hosting.com -- SpamAssassin; SSH access upon request; remote backup; their Netcraft uptime stats; very responsive customer support
• Hostingplus.com -- RedHat Linux variation
• ipowerweb.com -- see the User Reviews and Ratings of iPowerWeb at WebHostingRatings.com; I have received many spam messages promoting this company -- at addresses that I never give out -- so I recommend boycotting them; I've also seen a lot of articles/postings warning people to avoid iPowerWeb.com
• InternetConnection.net
• katamail.kataweb.it -- free, in Italian
• MyLinuxISP.com -- Postini filtering
• prohosting.com -- no shell access???
• rightonthemark.com -- 3 MB free, CommuniGate Pro mail server, server-side filters
• seznam.cz -- 10 MB free
• unacom.net -- the only occurrence of the word “IMAP” on their site is in the “old” directory on this page
• weblogger.com -- PLESK control panel, Manila hosting

Problematic Providers

Many of the providers in this section do not focus on IMAP, but instead focus on other services such as web hosting, spam fighting, or Internet connectivity. This means that the IMAP criteria that I am using to evaluate them are not what their business is focused on. I include them here . . .

• so that I can easily check in on them and see if they've changed their fees or services
• so that I know that I've already checked them out
• because they might be of interest to people reading this page

IMAP Service Providers with a High “Price per Meg per Year”

These providers let their users use IMAP to access their mailboxes, but they are, in my opinion, charging too much for the amount of IMAP-accessible space they provide. Space is cheap these days and if a service provider understands IMAP, they understand the need for lots of space. It's fine to have bandwidth limits and charges, but storage space should be cheap cheap cheap!

• 123mail.net -- extra charge for virus scanning; Courier IMAP
• catalog.com
• drizzle.com -- option to enable SpamAssassin
• DucTape.Net
• frii.com
• inwa.net -- UW IMAP, Horde/IMP, “Our intellegent [sic] e-mail pre-processor, checks for anything that smells like spam and files it away for further analysis.”
• Loadmail.com
• netenergy.net -- £19.95/10 MB/year
• NetHK.net
• rahul.net (a2i Communications) -- various types of mail filtering available
• solarhost.com -- imail.solarhost.com seems to be an IMAP server; “powered only by 100% renewable energy”
• swissmail.org -- site available in English and German
• syclone.net
• thelix.net -- IMAP available on Advanced, Premium, and Ultra accounts (but not Standard accounts), Courier IMAP, 90 minute LB4S (‡), optional C/R filtering
• webhosts.co.uk
• zxmail.com -- right column contains IMAP packages

Probably No IMAP4rev1

As far as I can tell, the following providers do not currently support IMAP4rev1, which is the current version of IMAP.

• aitcom.net -- As discussed in this Google Answers thread, there are many people who are unhappy with AITcom.net
• AletiaHosting.com -- there's no mention of IMAP in their Manual or FAQ
• aplus.net -- also see their Web Mail Plans & Prices and the comp.mail.misc message Abuse of Unsuspecting Webmail Users and the User Reviews and Ratings of Aplus.net at WebHostingRatings.com; IMAP is mentioned on their site here but according to this message, they do not support IMAP
• aventuremail.co.uk (aka aventuremail.com) -- $4.99/5 GB/life service, RoundCube webmail
• cotse.net
• emailfiltering.co.uk -- spam & virus detection of email that's sent to your pre-existing POP account(s); £1.75/month (one-month free trial); uses MS ActiveX technology & prefers MSIE 4.0 or higher; currently does not support IMAP
• Earthlink -- port 25 hijacking; no IMAP; Brightmail filtering (called Spaminator); challenge/response filtering. For more about their challenge/response filters, see EarthLink to Offer Anti-Spam E-Mail System by Jonathan Krim at The Washington Post (2003 May 7) and How EarthLink Is Blocking Spam For 5 Million Users By Mitch Wagner at InternetWeek.com (2003 June 6). According to this 2004-Jan-7 CNN article, they have “roughly 5 million paying subscribers.” As of April 2004, option to use @PlaneteBay.net email addresses. Supports DomainKeys.
• Gmail.com -- “A Google approach to email” that is currently available by invitation or by submitting a U.S. mobile phone number; ∞ + 1 Gig free; AJAX-based webmail; POP over SSL; SMTP AUTH over TLS; virus filtering (probably based on Sophos); if you use the Gmail outgoing SMTP server, you must use one of your authenticated Gmail addresses in your From: header line; uses DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM); subaddressing (discussed below); each incoming & outgoing mail msg must be 10 MB or less; account closed if 9 months of no activity; Also see my Gmail-related bookmarks at Del.icio.us/Deflexion.com/HostingProviders/Gmail, Gmail/Tools, and Gmail/Discussion
• gmx.net (aka gmx.de, gmx.ch, etc., affiliated with 1und1.de) -- one of the largest providers of free email in Germany; to use their premium service, you must have a German bank account; if you use the gmx outgoing SMTP server, you must put your gmx address in the From: header of your outgoing messages; In this 11-Jan-2004 message, Mark Crispin, the inventor of IMAP, said “gmx.de is well-known not to run a real IMAP server”; also see this 2002-Dec-04 message from Sam Varshavchik in which he said “Anything [such as the gmx server] that cannot receive mail addressed to multiple recipients cannot be technically described as a "mail server".”; also see the 2004-08-12 thread GMX increases free storage to 1GB at EMD.
• godaddy.com Email Accounts -- WebMail, spam filters; email services are also available on their webhosting plans; also see their Email Tutorials; note that godaddy.com is mainly known as a domain name registrar (and there are many people who are happy with their services); according to this message, they “do not provide IMAP support for our email services.”
• he.net -- users can track and seed files via BitTorrent
• herwebhost.com -- there's no mention of IMAP on their site
• hostbaby.com
• hostway.com -- introduced CleanMail spam and virus detection on 20-Jan-2004; as discussed in their Email FAQ, “Hostway does not support IMAP.”
• hotmail.com (aka 'MSN Hotmail') -- HTTPmail (MS's proprietary alternative to IMAP) for pay accounts (but not for new free accounts), .NET Passport required; 250 MB free; "MSN Hotmail Plus" package is $19.95/2000 MB/year; webmail requires cookies; between 60 and 180 million accounts (?); also see MSN Hotmail Fun Facts
• inbox.net -- as discussed in this Q&A, they currently do not even support POP, forums
• interland.net -- the only mention of IMAP on their site is in the KB article Mail Users Receive Duplicate Copies of E-mail, and this is in a generic comment that is not specific to Interland
• ixwebhosting.com
• netbasiks.com
• Netscape Mail -- 250 MB free; virus protection; mail is accessed via the NIM module, which is a proprietary Netscape enhancement; also see the Mozilla FAQ
• no-ip.com -- spam and virus detection
• operamail.com -- free/gratis and premium accounts, hosted by Outblaze Ltd.
• phpwebhosting.com -- their FAQ says that they do not support IMAP
• sonic.net -- SpamAssassin and Graymail, Spam FAQ, Graymail FAQ, procmail, Squirrelmail, Mail Snapshots and Retrieving files from snapshots
• spymac.com -- 1 gig free (as of 2004 April 5); SMTP AUTH as of 2004 Sept 24; “IMAP mail capabilities are under development”; webmail clent based on @Mail; WebDAV; discussion forums; also see this, this, and this thread at EMD
• webmasters.com -- the fact that they don't support IMAP is in their knowledge base (search for IMAP)
• webstrikesolutions.com
• Well.com (The WELL) -- SpamAssassin; basic virus scanning, procmail; also see Filtering with Pine at well.com; more about SpamAssassin -- & The WELL in general -- is in Dealing With Spam using SpamAssassin at The WELL and in Andrew Leonard's Spam vs. spam at Salon.com
• workspot.com -- $9.95/month, 100 MB, WebDAV, you can use a full graphical Linux “desktop and software through a web browser, from anywhere in the world”  (they are planning to implement IMAP)
• Yahoo! Mail Plus and Yahoo! Mail POP Access & Forwarding -- webmail requires cookies, subaddressing (discussed below), disposable email addresses for Yahoo! Mail Plus users, qmail MTA with this bug, Rocketmail technology, Network Appliance (NetApp) network file server, $19.95/2 GB/year, DomainKeys support;  Also see my Yahoo-related bookmarks at del.icio.us / Deflexion.com / HostingProviders / Yahoo
• zapmail.net
• zoemail.com -- disposable addresses; “patented AT&T Labs anti-spam solution” (might be a reason to Look OUT); “ZoEmail is a web-based e-mail service ... POP3/IMAP compatibility will be available in future ZoEmail upgrades.”
• zworg.com (irk.ca) -- webmail and POP, custom software