Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Tried IMAP again and went back to POP

A few years ago I tried IMAP with Entourage and encountered about a half a dozen strange issues with my mail hoster. They blamed in on Entourage 2004 as old software and said try again when you have an upgraded email client.

I've been on Outlook 2011 for a year, and just tried IMAP again, with another hoster, and have encountered another half a dozen issues and have gone back to POP once again.

I don't need or have to be on IMAP, but I do hear on many Mac forums the great superiority of IMAP over the antiquated POP.


These were my issues a couple of years ago with my first hoster :

Other imap issues

(error messages, not deleting emails, cannot find on server, and most weird: changing spam sieve rule to move messages from spam folder to inbox – it would not stick to spam folder or any folder within the hosters imap folders always went back to inbox, but would stick with any folder outside of hosters imap folder) – even with account unchecked, get uploads/updates and error messages. Need to delete the account)
These are my new issues with my new hoster:

Moving saved emails don't work well
Incoming/ outgoing server connections dropped a lot. Lots of time outs.
Conflicts with the laptop and desktop at home.
Reply icon now showing on either machine after replies — which defeats the purpose of having imap.
Never ending trail and error to get a good port for both incoming and outgoing.
Long delays in receiving email.
Received email from people with a yellow warning box saying a password must be entered to see the email.
Moving saved emails 10 at a time freezing the software.

Anyway, all these issue in both cases disappear completely with POP.

The new web hoster did mention that maybe Outlook does not work well with IMAP. I am now open to that being the culprit who knows.

When I have the energy one day, I'll test IMAP with Apples Mail.

FWIW I currently have four IMAP accounts, each from a different provider, as IMAP is the only reasonable way I have found to keep email on all my various devices (iMac, iPod, iPad, iPhone, MacBook) synchronized. I use the Apple Mail client on all of my devices and have not encountered any of the problems you describe. I have only had two kinds of problems…

1. The email server goes down. Of course this would effect SMTP, POP, and IMAP equally. This is sometimes evidenced by a recurring request the enter the account password.
2. A sent message appears in the Draft mailbox. This sometimes happens even when using the web interface so that can't be blamed on an Mail client.

I have not used either Entourage or Outlook in many years so I cannot comment on how well either handles IMAP, and I know that not all IMAP servers are created equal (Google Mail is a case in point) but from my experience I would have to suspect the client you are using and not IMAP per se. as the source of your problems.

Joe, thanks. You mean you have one IMAP account on four devices?

Well, I I've now tried with two different hosters and its been nowhere near as stable as POP. That said, I have never tried with Mail. I did get lots of more server issues on this last try which never happens with POP. And I got lots more asking for password boxes too.
Everyone on forums always says IMAP is way way superior to the antiquated horrid POP, so I keep trying again every two years.

FWIW, I'm using Gmail with Entourage 2004 (!) and it behaves quite well. A GMX account works with receiving mail, but not for sending. I don't use it often enough to warrant digging into that (the settings appear OK according to GMX instructions), and using a web mail interface works well enough.

The point is that different IMAP providers may differ in various respects, and web mail procedures don't exactly compare with POP mail on a local client. I suspect that part of your issues are due to that. Others I just don't understand, I must confess.

Btw, Joe was talking about different IMAP accounts with 4 different providers, presumably with clients on the 4 different devices he lists.

Yes that is exactly what I meant.

Ok, Joe, then you have 4 different email addresses.

In a word, yes. And I use all of them on all of my devices, depending on which one is handy at the moment.