> Gmail does have IMAP, but it’s extremely unreliable and buggy.
That's never been my experience at all. I've used Gmail via Thunderbird (mostly for Enigmail) for years with very very few problems. It occasionally chokes when sending large attachments, but it always works on the second try.
I second this. I've used it through Thunderbird to Mail.app and now with Sparrow and haven't had any problems. Even during the web outage a year (or two?) ago, IMAP was still up while the web version was down.
I've also been using gmail since it was invite-only beta and haven't experienced any major problems through the 7 years I've used it, not sure what everyone is complaining about.
Worth noting: I think the original complaint/idea (I think from Gruber or someone similar, I don't remember exactly) was more along the lines of having Twitter offer premium accounts that would never failwhale, and similar equivalents for other web services these days that seem to be falling apart under load. That idea I could understand, just not with Gmail.
I think if the bugs affected everyone, no one would use the product. It is going to depend on your use habits and the path your email client takes through the API.
After 15 years of running sendmail/postfix/uwimap/dovecot for a growing company, and uncounted spam fighting tools, I use google for all my mail accounts now. On their scale, they can do a better job at spam fighting than I can with only access to my own mail streams. (But I can beat them for reliability.)
1) The 10 connection limit bites surprisingly early. Mail.app makes multiple connections, and if you leave a couple computers logged in, carry an iPhone, and maybe use an iPad you will find yourself randomly blocked from your email. (Their "help"[1] article says you can reach the limit with as few as two sessions open.)
Google's solution is for you to remember to disconnect your computer from their IMAP servers when you are away.
2) IMAP searching is a mystery. I routinely have to use the web interface to search for things that I know are in my mail, but I can't find from Mail.app. I don't know who is at fault here.
3) I have instances of attachments becoming corrupted. Again, I can't conclusively place blame.
4) The strange organization issues from the "tags" vs. "folders" issues can be confusing to people that don't understand the nuts and bolts.
5) They have rather limited logging available. I recently had two laptops stolen which subsequently did IMAP updates while in possession of the parties unknown. Google's low granularity logging information (day and IP but no time information) caused trouble getting a court order to compel the ISP to produce the subscriber data. The court wants a specific time.
So there you have it. There are warts. But I'm not going to leave because they are great spam killers.
[1] They call it a "help article", but it really just says "This breaks, we know why, we do it deliberately, and we can't be bothered to make it better. Suck it, meatbag."
For what it's worth, I can confirm that Gmail IMAP legitimately is unbearably slow for some of us (conversely, the web interface has always been snappy for me, though I know it's been terribly slow for some). To the point that I gave up on keeping my email in sync and used POP on my desktop for years.
That's never been my experience at all. I've used Gmail via Thunderbird (mostly for Enigmail) for years with very very few problems. It occasionally chokes when sending large attachments, but it always works on the second try.