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Comment by grinich | Hacker News Reader

That's why we built Inbox. :)

https://www.inboxapp.com/

In short, the Inbox API is a translation layer between IMAP's eccentricities and modern JSON REST endpoints. Plus it's open source free software.

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Looks interesting. IMAP is a pain! We spent months trying to get really simple stuff working for a mail client we're building (http://www.sortd.com). Actually, to be accurate it runs inside Gmail because it's more of a way to manage email rather than a standalone client, but we still need to connect to the mailbox itself via IMAP. Started using context.io, which was useful, but they went kind of wayward from their original vision.

What about performance though? Things like search are almost just not viable with IMAP - WAY too slow - we find ourselves having to hack the Gmail DOM to do things we should be able to do directly via the mailbox.

Seems to me that IMAP needs to be updated or replaced. What do you think of the new Gmail API?

Wow, how long have you guys existed? I am shocked I didn't know about this product. That is IMHO, EXACTLY the product that has needed to be built for awhile. Get all those eccentricities into one library that provides a clean interface.

We announced this a couple of months ago, though the company has been around for a while. We're also just quieter than most startups. Less blogging and talk, more code. :)

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