I’m thinking of putting all my email archive (55k messages, about 6 GB) on a private IMAP server but I’m wondering how to access it remotely when needed.
Obviously I’d need a webmail client but is there any that can deal with that amount of data and also be able to search through To, From, Subject and body efficiently?
I can also set up a standalone search engine of some sort (the messages are stored one per file in regular folders) but then how do I view the message once I locate it?
I can also expose the IMAP server itself and see if I can find a mobile app that fits the bill but I’d rather not do that. A webmail client would be much easier to reverse proxy and protect.
The biggest problem is you have to set up every device independently with accounts, senders, signatures, and have one device online all the time to apply rules. It’s a lot of work to keep 3 mail clients all set up the same. Especially when clients all have their own bugs (ie; thunderbird has a CalDAV bug that makes it forget your password).
We need essentially self hosted gmail, where you have a web client for PC use and an app for mobile, mail is processed server-side, and settings are all automatically the same across clients.
Do you have a client you like for desktop? Thunderbird is not great, it’s slow and buggy.
Thunderbird is good enough for me I guess. I don’t think it is slow, it handles my multiple accounts just fine. I don’t have an overly complex email tbh, so my biggest requirements are only (a) how fast can I archive things (b) how easy it is to find things by searching. I also used evolution for a while, but thought it was doing more than I needed so I never cared about digging in deeper.