I have compiled a list of email providers here that support POP3 mail access on port 110 and IMAP mail access on 143, and also the big free webmail providers that do not just to round things off. If you know of any other reliable providers please add a comment.
Reason for creating this list
While setting up Interspire Email Marketer for a customer, I needed a mailbox to handle the bouceback emails. I would normally use a Gmail account for this, but the hosting provider has outbound ports 993 and 995 blocked which are needed to connect to POP/IMAP with Gmail.
I am not the hosting account holder and was trying to get this sorted out without having to waste time getting the account holder to see if they can get the ports unblocked. As it turns out I was able to use GAWab. I have no idea how good they are as a provider but time will tell.
AIM
POP3 on port 110: Yes
IMAP on port 143: Yes
Unfortunately this didn’t work for me because my bounced back emails never showed up in AIM’s Inbox. I suspect this is because the from/reply-to address were different from where the bounceback emails go to.
GAWab
POP3 on port 110: Yes
IMAP on port 143: Yes
When signing up you have to provide a phone number. When submitting the form, you’ll get told that the phone number is required event if a phone number is entered in the field. The only way I could get the form to submit was to ensure there were no spaces at all in the phone number.
Unlike AIM (see above) my bouceback emails did show up, although I needed to switch off the spam checking to they’d show in my inbox instead of the bulk folder. For now, I will be using this service.
Gmail
POP3 on port 110: No
IMAP on port 143: No
Gmail does support POP3 and IMAP access on the secure ports 993/995. The annoying thing is, unlike AIM, the bouceback emails showed up just fine (although they ended up in the Spam folder but that’s easily fixed with a filter) but I could not connect outbond from the hosting provider on the 993 or 995 ports.
GMX
POP3 on port 110: Yes
IMAP on port 143: Yes
I cannot confirm if this works because every time I tried to register I got the message “Your registration could not be processed at the moment. Please try again later. If the error persists, please contact us at support@gmx.com”
Update January 31st 2011: 8 weeks later I tried to create an account again and am still getting the same error message.
Hotmail / Live Mail
POP3 on port 110: No
IMAP on port 143: No
Hotpop
POP3 on port 110: No
IMAP on port 143: Unknown (I don’t think they do)
I attempted to create an account with Hotpop on January 31st 2011 but the authorization capctha code is broken so it wasn’t possible to create the account. I will try again another time.
Yahoo Mail
POP3 on port 110: Paid access
IMAP on port 143: Unsure
I did not test this because I wasn’t prepared to pay for access.
Zoho
POP3 on port 110: No
IMAP on port 143: No
As with Gmail, Zoho does support POP3 and IMAP access on the secure ports 993/995.
