IMAP/Outlook/email hosing/Gmail

[quanttrade99z]

Hello

I'm finally going to try to setup IMAP for my email... it has been far too long... my PST file for Outlook is 4-6+ Gigs already.

Is Gmail the way to go?
What service will be the most reliable? I don't mind to pay for a good service which I can trust.

Can I keep my existing email address? How do I hook up my current email account with my new service? I have been using Network Solutions... I think they have some IMAP stuff I could use... but they have a size limit of 2Gs.... and I'm not sure they are the best service...

Again, cost is not an issue, reliability and performance is what I care about. I need to be absolutely sure that I can trust them not to lose my email, and that I can trust them to remotely store/backup/protect large amounts (couple Gs) of emails.

Thanks! I know these are basic questions, but any advice would be very helpful!

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I don't know if gmail is the most reliable but it is pretty awesome for me. you can forward your current email to it.

if you want to pay, there are other services i'm sure that other people know more about.

what about your ISP email?

 

[quanttrade99z]

Do you use gmail with Outlook?

I move around sometimes, so I don't want to have to rely on my ISP. Plus I doubt they happen to offer the most robust/best solution.

 

[Nothinman]

I use Gmail's IMAP on my phone and via fetchmail on my computer and haven't had any issues. The hardest part for you will be getting your old mail onto their IMAP server, you might be able to just drag it from the PST to the IMAP server via Outlook but it'll take forever with that much mail.

 

[13Gigatons]

Is there any reason you can't just create another PST and drag 5GB of old mail to it and then close it. Usually people don't need old email for everyday use.

PS: No server is 100% reliable for long term storage.