POP3 or Gmail IMAP Opinion?

[benano]

I am setting up a new SugarCRM CE 6.0 box. I have an email account that is only accessible via POP3. I have enabled POP3 via config_override.php and it is working, although very buggy. Messages don't delete, they are always marked as Unread etc.

Do you think I should setup sugarCRM with direct access to my POP3 account,
or setup a free gmail account and have gmail fetch mail from my POP3 server and then set SugarCRM up with IMAP access to the gmail account instead?

[robertbmirth]

Short answer, Sugar is pushing away from pop3 so I'd be worried about anything that's losing/has lost support. I haven't had any problems using imap (except for speed issues which are inherent in my hosted Sugar instance; it only checks for group emails every 10-12 minutes) so I'd suggest that.

Long answer, gmail's imap has a lot of flexibility, especially if you're planning on customizing how your email works. Just as a background, I'm currently working on setting up my company's auto create case scenario with our mailbox, which is gmail/imap. The interesting thing about gmail's imap implementation is that, if you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, there's a lot of flexibility involved. In my situation, my coworkers want to be able to continue using gmail for sending/receiving/organizing their emails (namely for legacy/normalcy reasons, but I do agree with their request as there are speed issues with how Sugar handles emails) but we want the emails to automatically import and the conversations to follow and get recorded in Sugar. The interesting thing about Gmail's implementation of imap in particular is that Gmail, for some reason, does not use imap keywords apart from the standard flag set (/Seen, /Deleted, etc) so I've been able to use that to my advantage and create my own set of 'sugar flags' and I don't have to worry about it interfering with the standard functionality. Its been a lot of research (I hadn't even touched the imap protocol before, but now I have my "openssl s_client -crlf -connect imap.gmail.com:993" cygwin command down pat) but I've found it rather intriguing. Due to pop3's functionality, none of this would be possible on that kind of mailbox.