# Looking for some email server software (IMAP?)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-some-email-server-software-imap/253509>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 4, 2004, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-some-email-server-software-imap/253509 "2004-07-04T17:29:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2004, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-some-email-server-software-imap/253509/1 "2004-07-04T17:29:34Z")

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I recently bought two new computers to supplement my aging Dell Inspiron, and am looking for some way of making my all my emails available to each one of them. I have six separate POP3 accounts, and I’m neurotic about keeping all emails I send or recieve. This was easy with just one computer, but now I’m finding that it’s difficult to keep all three of them in sync.

IMAP would seem to be the answer to my problems, but only one of the accounts supports it. What I’m looking for is some Linux-compatible software that would automatically download the messages from all my accounts, and make them all available to me via IMAP. I have plenty of servers that I could run it on. Any ideas?

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**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-some-email-server-software-imap/253509/2 "2004-07-05T12:36:04Z")

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You don’t quite define your requirements

Do you want a IMAP server to run on a Linux box, or do you want an IMAP server to run on a Windows box that Linux clients can access?

**Linux IMAP servers**  
_UW-IMAP_ - [UW-IMAP](http://www.washington.edu/imap/) or  
_Dovecot_ - [DoveCot](http://dovecot.org/)  
with _Postfix_ SMTP server - [postfix.org](http://www.postfix.org/start.html)  
for getting your POP mail use _FetchMail_

For an out of the box Linux server solution try **SME6** - [www.contribs.org](http://www.contribs.org).  
It will handle your email, Dynamic DNS, Web Proxy, File sharing, Web serving - an exceptional solution, and completely open.

**Windows IMAP servers**  
_Mercury Mail Server_ - [Mercury Mail Transport](http://www.pmail.com/overviews/ovw_mercwin.htm)  
This will also pick up your POP mail

All free solutions.

Simon

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**Author:** ![nesta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a4c791/32.png) [@nesta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nesta)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-some-email-server-software-imap/253509/3 "2004-07-05T15:52:16Z")

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I’m assuming you meant that the server software should be linux compatible.

Another IMAP server is [Courier IMAP](http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5404&package_id=6292). Probably not very important in your environment, but last time I tested UW IMAP it used quite a bit of memory. Courier memory use is much lower. Also, I’m not sure if stock UW supports the [Maildir format](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html), which could save you the headache of a corrupted mbox.

As **si\_blakely** said, fetchmail is a good option to get messages from the POP accounts to your server.