Is OfflineIMAP right for my use case?

Mike Murdoch main.haarp at googlemail.com
Sat Jul 23 12:06:12 BST 2016


Hello,

I've been trying to find solutions to ease my Email management for a
while now. OfflineIMAP looks promising, but before I start setting
things up, I'm wondering if it is even the right thing to use.

Current setup:
- A couple of different Email accounts with different providers
- Different devices (email clients) in different networks that should
have access to all accounts
- A home server

Requirements:
- Grab Email from the provider a soon as possible, leave nothing behind
(i.e. POP3 principle, delete from server)
- Still allow synchronization of mail between clients
- Make setup of a new client easier (don't want to add 10 accounts to
each new device)

So I was thinking about using a sort of proxy on my home server. The
idea is that the proxy grabs mail from all accounts and stores them
locally. Then my clients only need to connect to this proxy via IMAP to
see all mail and stay synchronized.

One way this could work is that each provider gets its own folder on the
proxy. e.g. Gmail/Inbox, Gmail/Sent, etc.

A remaining issue is how to handle outgoing mail. If I have everything
going through the proxy, how do I tell it which account to ultimately
send with? And I *do* want to be able to send via any account.

Is OfflineIMAP suitable for this kind of task? If not, is there
something else?

Is my idea sound or are there any glaring mistakes?

Should I even bother with OfflineIMAP or wait for imapfw to mature?


Many thanks!



More information about the OfflineIMAP-project mailing list