[markw10]

Hello, I just created an account with HostGator for my business and we have 6 emails. We have imap email and our account allows us to check email once per minute per email. We have it set up to check every 5 minutes so this should not be a problem.
They then told us that there was a problem with it checking more frequently and also overloading the server by issueing 'multiple imap commands per email, 3 to 4'. I can view our server processes and sure enough each email is showing 4 imap commands. I unchecked 'use IDLE command" since I know IDLE command has something to do with it checking frequently for email.
Unfortunately we have 3 processes running on our website so once we had 24 for the 6 emails that goes over our limit of 25 and our website goes down. For now we have had to turn off most of our emails except 2 that we receive most email at which is causing major problems.
When we talked to HostGator that question was "Do you use Mac mail? Mac Mail is knowing for doing that". Since I only use Mac's I don't want to have to switch to Windows for email or use another email program like Entourage or Thunderbird. This is a frustrating issue and when I did research on Google I saw a lot of other people having this issue but didn't see any answers. Any ideas what is causing this and how I can fix it?

[besson3c]

They are right. Mac Mail is absolutely horrible about its interaction with an IMAP server, creating tons of brainless processes that can put major loads on a server, likely not abiding by the RFC spec. It's not only OS X Mail, but iPhones too...

There is no fix, aside from using another mail client.

OS X Mail has a great interface and some nice features, but it really is a horrible mail client in other respects.

[markw10]

Thank you for the information. It is definitely frustrating. The last thing I want to do is use Entourage. I have Office 2008 on my Mac but only use it for Word and Excel.
Another option may be to use Mozilla Thunderbird. I just hope this is something that Apple fixes soon, maybe with Snow Leopard.
The most frustrating situation for me is the iPhone. I'm mobile most of the day. At least I have the option of using Webmail. I can check about upgrading to a higher account but that would be pointless but I'll figure out some way to make it work. I was hoping it was just an option I have set wrong but seems it's more just the way the program is written.
Are there any 3rd party email apps for the iPhone? I assume Apple wouldn't allow that but if so it would be nice.

[besson3c]

You could also create yourself a Google account or another IMAP account and transfer your messages there. Perhaps some other provider will be okay with OS X Mail raping the server?

Thunderbird 3 beta 2 is very nice, I'm liking it a lot. It definitely is a much better IMAP client in terms of how it behaves, performs, and scales.