Fastmail and IMAP

the boyler · 30 Oct 2013, 06:29 AM

I've been using Gmail for a decade and for a variety of reasons am moving away. I've looked at lots of generic providers (ie, people who don't do self-hosted domains but you give you an account with them) and aside from the basic differentiation (attachment size, bandwidth etc) the big one for me is the ability to not view the spam folder in IMAP.

Google do this, but that's not use if you're migrating away.

Zoho do it, but that's no use if you don't want a domain to accompany the email address.

I've asked Fastmail support if they d0 (I can't see any way to do it in settings) but they haven't replied. So, wondered if people here could help - can fastmail be configured to do it, or can people recommend a service which does allow this?

gardenweed · 30 Oct 2013, 07:55 AM

In the Fastmail, Settings -> Folders you can select "Hide Folder"

image

Is that what you mean?

BritTim · 30 Oct 2013, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the boyler

I've been using Gmail for a decade and for a variety of reasons am moving away. I've looked at lots of generic providers (ie, people who don't do self-hosted domains but you give you an account with them) and aside from the basic differentiation (attachment size, bandwidth etc) the big one for me is the ability to not view the spam folder in IMAP.

Google do this, but that's not use if you're migrating away.

Zoho do it, but that's no use if you don't want a domain to accompany the email address.

I've asked Fastmail support if they d0 (I can't see any way to do it in settings) but they haven't replied. So, wondered if people here could help - can fastmail be configured to do it, or can people recommend a service which does allow this?

If the folder containing spam is not an IMAP "subscribed" folder, then it will not appear within most mail clients. The mail client should provide a way to specify which folders are subscribed. This does not prevent your users (once you have configured their client) from manually subscribing folders you have designated to hold spam. Note that there is always the option of redirecting spam to a totally separate account.

If this answer is insufficient to address your concerns, perhaps you could rephrase the question, indicating the underlying issues you are trying to prevent.

the boyler · 30 Oct 2013, 09:18 AM

Thanks both for responding so quickly.

The issue is that I predominantly use clients to check email, not web interfaces. In my case, that means Mail.app 7 on mavericks and Ios7 mail.

I can choose in Fastmail whether to hide a folder or not, but - as far as I can tell - that only applies when viewing in the webmail interface.

If I connect via Mail.app, I don't have the ability to choose which folders to subscribe to or not in the client.
I currently use gmail, where I can set the spam folder in gmail to not show in imap, so it never pulls messages into whatever client I'm using and I need the same functionality for whichever service I end up using.

BritTim · 30 Oct 2013, 04:15 PM

The Maverick Mail app has IMAP subscription lists under "Get Account Info".

I am no expert on the IOS7 Mail app. Its IMAP support seems pretty buggy, and I avoid it. Thus, please forgive me if I am writing nonsense below.

I am unsure whether the IOS7 Mail app honors folder subscriptions set up using the Maverick Mail app. I would expect it to, but (as stated above) the app is buggy and might not.

Is your objective in hiding the spam folder to avoid problems arising from "move to junk"? If so, I think you are OK with Fastmail. I believe the spam folder in Mail App is always called "Junk". Fortunately, in Fastmail it is called "Junk Mail" and there is no need for a folder called "Junk" to exist.. As I understand it, "move to junk" does nothing if no "Junk" folder exists.

Feel free to continue this discussion if there are other specific issues that are not addressed above.

the boyler · 30 Oct 2013, 05:26 PM

Hi Tim,

You're right that mail is buggy, not least in not allowing individual folder subscriptions on the client side (hence the need for subscriptions to be managed at the server side).

My objective is to avoid having lots of spam delivered to my spam folder, on the expectation that it will be there for me to check at some stage; I will check it, but I want to check it whenever I want by going to the web interface, not by viewing the spam folder on my client. It's because I like empty folders wherever possible, so manually going through the spam folder to decide that it is indeed spam is something I can waste a good 30 minutes a day doing, so making it not be visible to me is a way I can save that time.

DrStrabismus · 30 Oct 2013, 08:59 PM

You can use any client to set subscriptions, but if a client does support setting subscriptions it probably wont honour them.

I don't understand what you saying though, why does having a spam folder force you to look through it.

the boyler · 31 Oct 2013, 03:02 AM

Because it sits there like Luke's lightsabre on the emperors chair, willing me to get all anal and check spam and stop the productive work I'm actually supposed to be doing.

BritTim · 31 Oct 2013, 05:33 AM

As I understand your requirements:

Avoid creating a folder called "Junk"
If IOS7 Mail app honors subscriptions, then unsubscribe "Junk Mail", and I think you are done.
If you confirm that one of the many bugs is ignoring folder subscription lists, then have a separate account just for spam and (in the server side sieve script) redirect all spam to the separate account on delivery.

Another good alternative is just to disable the Mail app and use the (browser based) mobile client provided by Fastmail that is receiving good reviews.

Mystakill · 1 Nov 2013, 09:44 PM

Speaking of IMAP, in the comments section on a Macworld article about the author's issues & subsequent move from Gmail, I found this report on IMAP Server Compliancy Status.

Cyrus is listed as "non-compliant" for a variety of reasons, but there's been little effort put into explaining why/how a server has failed each of the test areas. It also doesn't jibe with the mail server comparison chart. Also, Cyrus has had beta CalDAV and CardDAV support for nearly a year. Is this something that Bron's been working on, or is just coincidental that FM is now working on adding support for those?

robn · 2 Nov 2013, 05:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mystakill

Cyrus is listed as "non-compliant" for a variety of reasons, but there's been little effort put into explaining why/how a server has failed each of the test areas.

Its showing results for 2.3.12p2, which is ancient - it was released in April 2008! The latest stable release of Cyrus is 2.4.17, released in December 2012.

FastMail is running the 2.5 development series, which is further along still. I don't know the exact state of our IMAP compliance, but I'd be surprised if it had anything more than minor compliance problems on edge cases.

Quote:

Also, Cyrus has had beta CalDAV and CardDAV support for nearly a year. Is this something that Bron's been working on, or is just coincidental that FM is now working on adding support for those?

The CalDAV and CardDAV support was implemented at CMU on top on the 2.4 series, so it doesn't work as-is on the 2.5 series due to the massive internal changes there. Bron is currently porting that work to 2.5.

Support in Cyrus isn't enough to release a CalDAV/CardDAV product though. We need to build all the web and management support code and tools, the user interface, and properly integrate it into all our other systems. Even if we didn't have to port the Cyrus changes to 2.5 we'd still have to do all that other work.

We've been working on that for the last few months and we're almost there (we're still trying for the end of the year for the calendar release).

brong · 2 Nov 2013, 06:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mystakill

Speaking of IMAP, in the comments section on a Macworld article about the author's issues & subsequent move from Gmail, I found this report on IMAP Server Compliancy Status.

Cyrus is listed as "non-compliant" for a variety of reasons, but there's been little effort put into explaining why/how a server has failed each of the test areas. It also doesn't jibe with the mail server comparison chart. Also, Cyrus has had beta CalDAV and CardDAV support for nearly a year. Is this something that Bron's been working on, or is just coincidental that FM is now working on adding support for those?

Released "Cyrus" and our code are becoming further and further apart unfortunately.

Released Cyrus 2.4 fails quite a few tests on that list.

Upstream master Cyrus (what will be) 2.5 only fails three. Our code is based on that. Those three are all related to LIST SUBSCRIBED RECURSIVEMATCH - which is a horrible horrible thing. The only real way to do it is to walk the mailboxes db and subscribed DB at the same time, or to cache one in memory. I have patches that do that, but they're pretty invasive on the mailbox listing code, and I'm not certain that they're efficient enough for production use.

....

OK, and now to CalDAV/CardDAV. Ken has built them in Cyrus on top of the 2.4 code.

I'm working (in between dealing with support requests, which has been almost my entire week - Rob Mueller is on leave for a couple of weeks and I didn't realise how much support he was handling! Yikes) on porting that code on top of git master. That's interesting work in itself.

Even more tricky will be THEN porting out conversations/search code on top of that. Both Ken Murchison (CMU) and Greg Banks (previously Opera, now working for SGI) made significant changes to the message layer and how it reads from the cache file to find facts about the message for searching or calendaring purposes. So I need to merge those.

Anyway - the Cyrus implementation at FastMail is very particular about following all the standards which it does follow. There are a couple of Sieve extensions we don't have, and a couple of other bits and pieces - but we have a very good QRESYNC and CONDSTORE implementation, and our FUZZY search is nice (that's what the web interface uses).

Mystakill · 14 Nov 2013, 11:55 PM

robn & brong, thanks for the detailed updates. It appears that you're moving forward, even with what sounds like some fairly major disparities between versions. Backporting is generally difficult enough, so I don't envy your having to migrate an add-on to a moving target

bwat47 · 18 Nov 2013, 12:49 AM

I've found fastmail's IMAP to be quite good, its one of the reasons I switched from gmail. I've had zero issues with any of the mail clients that I use (apple mail on my mac, EM Client on my windows desktop, aquamail on my android devices).

Can't wait for the CalDav/CardDav support!

30 Oct 2013, 06:29 AM	#1
the boyler Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 4	Fastmail and IMAP I've been using Gmail for a decade and for a variety of reasons am moving away. I've looked at lots of generic providers (ie, people who don't do self-hosted domains but you give you an account with them) and aside from the basic differentiation (attachment size, bandwidth etc) the big one for me is the ability to not view the spam folder in IMAP. Google do this, but that's not use if you're migrating away. Zoho do it, but that's no use if you don't want a domain to accompany the email address. I've asked Fastmail support if they d0 (I can't see any way to do it in settings) but they haven't replied. So, wondered if people here could help - can fastmail be configured to do it, or can people recommend a service which does allow this?

31 Oct 2013, 05:33 AM	#9
BritTim The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2003 Location: mostly in Thailand Posts: 3,095	As I understand your requirements: Avoid creating a folder called "Junk" If IOS7 Mail app honors subscriptions, then unsubscribe "Junk Mail", and I think you are done. If you confirm that one of the many bugs is ignoring folder subscription lists, then have a separate account just for spam and (in the server side sieve script) redirect all spam to the separate account on delivery. Another good alternative is just to disable the Mail app and use the (browser based) mobile client provided by Fastmail that is receiving good reviews.

30 Oct 2013, 07:55 AM	#2
gardenweed Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Perth Posts: 664	In the Fastmail, Settings -> Folders you can select "Hide Folder" image Is that what you mean?

30 Oct 2013, 09:18 AM	#4
the boyler Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 4	Thanks both for responding so quickly. The issue is that I predominantly use clients to check email, not web interfaces. In my case, that means Mail.app 7 on mavericks and Ios7 mail. I can choose in Fastmail whether to hide a folder or not, but - as far as I can tell - that only applies when viewing in the webmail interface. If I connect via Mail.app, I don't have the ability to choose which folders to subscribe to or not in the client. I currently use gmail, where I can set the spam folder in gmail to not show in imap, so it never pulls messages into whatever client I'm using and I need the same functionality for whichever service I end up using.

30 Oct 2013, 04:15 PM	#5
BritTim The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2003 Location: mostly in Thailand Posts: 3,095	The Maverick Mail app has IMAP subscription lists under "Get Account Info". I am no expert on the IOS7 Mail app. Its IMAP support seems pretty buggy, and I avoid it. Thus, please forgive me if I am writing nonsense below. I am unsure whether the IOS7 Mail app honors folder subscriptions set up using the Maverick Mail app. I would expect it to, but (as stated above) the app is buggy and might not. Is your objective in hiding the spam folder to avoid problems arising from "move to junk"? If so, I think you are OK with Fastmail. I believe the spam folder in Mail App is always called "Junk". Fortunately, in Fastmail it is called "Junk Mail" and there is no need for a folder called "Junk" to exist.. As I understand it, "move to junk" does nothing if no "Junk" folder exists. Feel free to continue this discussion if there are other specific issues that are not addressed above.

30 Oct 2013, 05:26 PM	#6
the boyler Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 4	Hi Tim, You're right that mail is buggy, not least in not allowing individual folder subscriptions on the client side (hence the need for subscriptions to be managed at the server side). My objective is to avoid having lots of spam delivered to my spam folder, on the expectation that it will be there for me to check at some stage; I will check it, but I want to check it whenever I want by going to the web interface, not by viewing the spam folder on my client. It's because I like empty folders wherever possible, so manually going through the spam folder to decide that it is indeed spam is something I can waste a good 30 minutes a day doing, so making it not be visible to me is a way I can save that time.

30 Oct 2013, 08:59 PM	#7
DrStrabismus The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 2,804	You can use any client to set subscriptions, but if a client does support setting subscriptions it probably wont honour them. I don't understand what you saying though, why does having a spam folder force you to look through it.

31 Oct 2013, 03:02 AM	#8
the boyler Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 4	Because it sits there like Luke's lightsabre on the emperors chair, willing me to get all anal and check spam and stop the productive work I'm actually supposed to be doing.

1 Nov 2013, 09:44 PM	#10
Mystakill Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Baltimore, MD (USA) Posts: 835	Speaking of IMAP, in the comments section on a Macworld article about the author's issues & subsequent move from Gmail, I found this report on IMAP Server Compliancy Status. Cyrus is listed as "non-compliant" for a variety of reasons, but there's been little effort put into explaining why/how a server has failed each of the test areas. It also doesn't jibe with the mail server comparison chart. Also, Cyrus has had beta CalDAV and CardDAV support for nearly a year. Is this something that Bron's been working on, or is just coincidental that FM is now working on adding support for those?

14 Nov 2013, 11:55 PM	#13
Mystakill Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Baltimore, MD (USA) Posts: 835	robn & brong, thanks for the detailed updates. It appears that you're moving forward, even with what sounds like some fairly major disparities between versions. Backporting is generally difficult enough, so I don't envy your having to migrate an add-on to a moving target

18 Nov 2013, 12:49 AM	#14
bwat47 Member Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 41	I've found fastmail's IMAP to be quite good, its one of the reasons I switched from gmail. I've had zero issues with any of the mail clients that I use (apple mail on my mac, EM Client on my windows desktop, aquamail on my android devices). Can't wait for the CalDav/CardDav support!