Enable Dropbox to store and sync e-mail messages by adding IMAP support

[vabarger]

Dropbox is wonderful for storing and syncing files, but it ignores a key part of personal and business storage: e-mail. Many if not most e-mail services provide limited space for e-mail messages. As a result, users are forced to delete previous e-mail messages to make room for new ones.

Dropbox could easily solve this problem by adding support for the IMAP protocol. Dropbox users could then configure their mail clients to use Dropbox as a mailstore. This would allow e-mail messages to be moved to Dropbox for storage and retrieval from any IMAP-compatible mail client.

[Nancy]

This idea has been closed as it has reached the end of the Share an Idea process.

Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do!

[Hans_H]

---

@vabarger wrote:

Dropbox is wonderful for storing and syncing files, but it ignores a key part of personal and business storage: e-mail. Many if not most e-mail services provide limited space for e-mail messages. As a result, users are forced to delete previous e-mail messages to make room for new ones.

Dropbox could easily solve this problem by adding support for the IMAP protocol. Dropbox users could then configure their mail clients to use Dropbox as a mailstore. This would allow e-mail messages to be moved to Dropbox for storage and retrieval from any IMAP-compatible mail client.

---

I agree!! Vabarger signals a vital shortcoming of Dropbox in not enabling e-mail syncing! My provider uses a POP-protocol, but I also use gmail- and iCloud-accounts and would like to be able to sync all my mail, i.e. inbox, mailboxes, including subboxes, archives etc. between my iMacs at different locations.

[Mark]

I can pretty much guarantee it will not come - they have trialled a similar sort of service (Mailbox) which they decommisioned recently. 

The shortcoming isnt with Dropbox - its with your email providers as they can implement IMAP and you are sorted. 

[vabarger]

Mark, I think the problem with Mailbox was that it was a separate e-mail client. Many people are happy with their e-mail clients; they're just not able to save many messages, due to storage restrictions imposed by their e-mail providers. If Dropbox added support for IMAP, users could use their favorite e-mail clients to store their viewed/sent mail on Dropbox.

Unfortunately, asking e-mail providers to support IMAP isn't sufficient. All of my e-mail providers (including my work e-mail) support IMAP. The problem is they have significant limitations on storage space, and I am constantly having to delete messages to stay within my quota. If I could use my e-mail client to transfer mesages to a Dropbox mailstore, accessed via IMAP, I wouldn't have this constraint. I would simply add the Dropbox IMAP server to my e-mail client, and any messages I moved to the Dropbox mailbox could then be accessed from any of my computers and mobile devices.

[Mark]

---

vabarger wrote:

Dropbox could easily solve this problem by adding support for the IMAP protocol. Dropbox users could then configure their mail clients to use Dropbox as a mailstore. This would allow e-mail messages to be moved to Dropbox for storage and retrieval from any IMAP-compatible mail client.

---

Not easily as its totally and utterly against everything that they offer. And again, its still the ISP thats at fault here - I use Office 365 for example for my emails and each one comes with, as standard, 50gb of storage (for way way less money that Dropbox charge). 

[Daphne]

This idea is going to need a bit more support.

We've updated the status to encourage more users to back you up!

[nullren]

Being able to archive old emails into Dropbox would be useful. I currently do some variant of this by storing emails in Maildir format in a couple directories. One Maildir I sync with my IMAP server, the other I use for long term archiving (ie, I copy from the other Maildir to this one).

It would be very convenient to provide just basic IMAP access to a Maildir in one's Dropbox. 

[Walter]

Thank you for your idea, while we can’t take every idea forward we do regularly re-review and will update you if anything changes!

[Walter]

Thank you for your idea, while we can’t take every idea forward we do regularly re-review and will update you if anything changes!

[Walter]

Thank you for your idea, while we can’t take every idea forward we do regularly re-review and will update you if anything changes!

[Nancy]

This idea has been closed as it has reached the end of the Share an Idea process.

Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do!