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SmarterMail 13? Move along...
Problem reported by Colin M - 11/14/2014 at 9:25 AM
Resolved
I'm very disappointed to see a major version upgrade and IMAP SEARCH is still not supported. All mobile and tablet email clients I know of do not download the entire mailbox and rely on IMAP search for searching the full mailbox so this glaring omission is not excusable. The first mention I can find of it was almost 10 years ago! Don't expect me to pay $$$ for upgrade protection when major version upgrades are as unexciting as SM13 and something as important as IMAP search is still ignored. I won't even bother to take 5 minutes to install this upgrade. Sorry to minimize your efforts, but it seems you implement features that are easy rather than features people really need.

8 Replies

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2
Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
Your on a very short list of people that doesn't see the importance of Abuse Detection, Intrusion Detection and overall security improvements that help prevent a mail server from being comprised or more importantly, alerted that there is suspicious activity. 
 
Adding new Security features to SmarterMail while dealing with 1000's of concurrent connections is not an easy task.  The more we monitor, the more resources the server could take.  We often how to re-write or optimize many areas of the mail server when we add these so that each version of SmarterMail doesn't take more and more CPU etc.
 
I think the negative votes for this thread confirms what I'm saying.
 
Thanks,
 
Tim
 
 
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com
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Colin M Replied
Thanks for the response, Tim.
 
First, I should mention that I have been using SmarterMail since 3.x if I remember correctly and with many domains and users. I do see the importance of Abuse Detection, Intrusion Detection, etc.. which is why I was pleased to see these feature implemented in previous versions. SM13 improves on them but only marginally.
 
1) Passwords: We've been using strong passwords for years (thanks SM4). Good practices (like disabling non-encrypted connections) have kept our passwords safe and it has not been necessary to force resets and such. Nice features to maybe use someday though, sure.
2) Abuse Detection: SM12 works pretty well. Great to improve, but this has not been a problem in my experience, only once or twice in something like 10 years and existing features did aid. Automatic actions arguably should have been implemented in the first place.
3) Blacklisting: This would have been useful once about 4 years ago, but definitely not a daily issue for me. I don't want to be manually managing blacklists all the time anyway and there is always a proper firewall for these things.
4) Restore User Data: Can recall only once where this would have been useful (deleting "Sent" somehow also deleted "Sent Items") so not a big deal..
5) Secure Aliases: I don't understand why someone would want this feature but ok..
 
So maybe some people with highly targeted domains and really dumb users are really excited about these features but I am not. I feel like I got burned this time around paying ahead of time for upgrade protection.
 
In the case of IMAP search the first mention of it is 9.5 years ago and there have been other mentions as well:
 
 
And my own original thread which never received a response:
 
 
I also submitted a ticket through the "Product Feedback" page as well on April 4 to the same effect.
 
What I am asking for here is not some obscure feature, it is one that is part of the IMAP4 RFC and used by all major mobile and tablet clients, possibly some desktop clients, and implemented by many other competing servers (Gmail, Outlook.com, IBM Domino, Dovecot, etc...). Since I have requested it there have been two major version releases and no mention of ever supporting this part of the IMAP spec.
 
Again, thanks for your response, but please reconsider despite my sour tone.
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Steve Reid Replied
I would make another thread as a suggestion asking for IMAP search again. If you leave out the negatives then you will get voted up and perhaps Smartertools may then see the importance of it.
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Colin M Replied
The neg votes were probably all from SmarterTools employees to begin with, lol. Hey, if I am the only one that wants this fixed then I'm just going to be SOL (and therefore wandering off the pasture). If anyone else cares about it they had better speak up on their own, I've said enough already.
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Paul Blank Replied
IMAP Search is important! Really.
5
Tim Uzzanti Replied
Employee Post
The reason your request for IMAP search hasn't been heavily requested is because it works in most cases.  There are a couple clients that it doesn't work with.  I believe iOS is one of them.
 
Another reason it hasn't been requested much is because most people use EAS on iOS... and EAS has specific search methods which work just fine.
 
In regards to your comments on Security or Intrusion Detection.  What may not apply to you applies to many others.  There are companies with millions of mailboxes and SmarterTools is trying to provide most of the security and protection out of the box so that they don't need to implement solutions from Third Parties.  There are industries that help prevent SPAM, Intrusions, etc... and were trying to provide the most we can out of the box at the cost of only our license.
 
Even with the comments above, we do anticipate resolving IMAP search for the clients that are having difficulty.  But, you could also try another protocol or method to access your mail which might provide even more functionality than what you're used to with IMAP.
 
Tim
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com
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Colin M Replied
Note that as of SmarterMail 14 it appears that IMAP search does work in such a way that it is useful to common mobile clients (I just tested on K9 Mail). Thanks SmarterTools!
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Colin M Replied
NOTE: This appears to be resolved as of SmarterMail 14.

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