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.

  • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    Obviously I’d need a webmail client

    Why “obviously”? Plenty of open source, high quality email clients for desktop and mobile, and I can not think of any scenario nowadays where you’d be willing to access your email from an untrusted device anyway.

    • density@kbin.social
      2·
      9 months ago

      for myself I find the existing android clients far from adequate. if you have filters, folders, identities etc it is a fuck tonne of set up. last time i tried i just gave up.

    • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        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.