[Evolution-users] IMAP vs POP3

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Tue, 2025-10-07 at 17:29 -0400, Michael S. via evolution-users
wrote:
> More recently, I have overbserved long delays each time I load Evo, and the
> IMAP folders syncing and refreshing each time. I use 10 folders and my
> combined IMAP accounts are around 20k messages.
> 
> What about if I create a POP account and set it to keep messgaes for XX days.
> In the meantime create some local folders of must have mail. so I can archive
> them to NAS? 
> 
> On my mobile, I would keep it on IMAP and use the mobile as a master clean up
> of IMAP. Is that a sound approach to mail management? What could go wrong?

Before trying to make something fast, it's advisable to measure what is
actually slowing it down. Is there any reason to think that using POP
is going to be any faster than IMAP or could the problem simply be with
your mail provider?

Also, do you mean to access the same mailstore using both POP and IMAP?
If the POP access only keeps messages for XX days, what happens to the
IMAP access? What happens to the local POP store when you "clean up"
the IMAP version? Have you tried this?

The proposal sounds complicated to me, with a lot of manual management
that could easily go wrong. I would advise trying it on a test account
first (though a small test account won't tell you anything useful about
the performance impact on the real account)

poc