Help needed to find root cause of poor email client performance

[jingo_man]

I switched mail provider after Google ceased its free legacy G-Suite accounts. My new provider is servermx.com. I have a smaller domain hosted there, so thought to move this larger and more used domain over too.

I get regular issues with the accounts not refreshing and/or syncing - it's configured as IMAP, which shouldn't cause this. On the iPhone, it shows up as "Account Errors" at the foot of the screen.

I have also used Mail.app, Spark and Airmail apps, all via IMAP protocol.

Also search is pretty terrible now. And hideously slow.

How much of this is the mail provider or the mail client and its [advanced] settings to cache better? Or is it that Google's Gmail service is actually that much better in this regard?

If it is the mail provider, how do I test any other prospective service to compare? What metrics or features are needed? I am looking at Zoho as a replacement, though only need the email service.

Any opinions or inputs are welcome!

 

[mystery hill]

Or is it that Google's Gmail service is actually that much better in this regard?

This. Gmail is much better than your new provider. I’d go for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for hosted mail if you’re running a business with multiple users.

If it’s just for you, then consider iCloud for your email. You will need an iCloud+ subscription to use a custom domain. It starts at $0.99 for 50GB of storage.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I have one domain's email on Office 365 Exchange and another on the basic IMAP that's provided with that domain's web host. I haven't noticed any issues with either but I don't like the fact that, in iOS Mail, I can't move emails from the IMAP account to folders on the Exchange account.

 

[jingo_man]

I already pay for iCloud's extra storage, so qualify for this "custom email domain" hosting, but when I looked at this last year, it was missing a bunch of [advanced] configuration items that I might otherwise expect, which is why I didn't pursue it any further at that time. It was a brand new service back then.

Does anyone have any experience over this past year of performance, for 10GB+ mailboxes?

The charges for G-Suite were high enough to put me off. I used Zoho to help a friend with his new, small domain, which also meant he could qualify for their free tier. The size of my inbox means I would need a paid for tier, but is much lower than G-Suite.

But I do like the Gmail Labels, to move on from folder management... Very few have replicated this though. FastMail does, but is far too expensive to justify for my use-case.