Multiple IMAP Users and Outlook

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Hi,

I'm running a VPS-2000 account with a particular domain/account that has approximately 60 email accounts, although about 30-35 are actually used on a regular basis.

There are a handful of those 60 email accounts that are set up as IMAP for multiple users to check, they are for specific clients to use to get to a "group" of agents. In other words there are 3-4 agents checking the same email accounts, some have 5-6 IMAP accounts they are monitoring.

While it seemingly works great when there is only one computer doing the checking (at night), when the business day is in full force the response time of Outlook and the IMAP accounts is terribly slow and freezes up.

I'm wondering if there is some sort of advice someone can give to help me tweak either my server, or outlook to not turn into a snail when multiple people are on line.

There are also some cases of single email account users to be getting timeout errors and slow response.

My server loads that I can see don't show any huge amount of stress or load, almost non-existent. But there must be something that I'm missing or that needs to be tweaked.

Thanks!
Nick
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Scott
Hello Nick,

Since the nature of an IMAP account is to keep mail on the server and sync at specific intervals, it is entirely feasible that the accounts checking the IMAP accounts are causing slowness. This would be due to them trying to sync up with each other. As only one email account is working at night, it does not have to sync up with all changes made by the other accounts. The daytime being busier, all the accounts are trying to sync together.

You may try and have the users increase the times between server checks so that it reduces the amount of syncing. Having too many IMAP connections at once can certainly also cause one or more to timeout when checking.

I hope this answers your question. If you have any more questions or information specific to the issue please leave a comment below so we can further assist you.

Best Regards,
Scott M