> I used Dovecot to run an IMAP server locally which would get my mail when it could. This made it very quick in emacs because it wouldn't have to wait for any

> I used Dovecot to run an IMAP server locally which would get my mail when it could. This made it very quick in emacs because it wouldn't have to wait for any remote server. I do a similar thing, but using mbsync to save into maildir. That way it's a simple cron job/systemd service to do the fetching, and Emacs/mutt/whatever can read the data without needing a server process to be running. I used to use Gnus, but since it does everything in elisp it makes Emacs freeze :( I now use mu4e, which uses an external command (mu) to query the maildir, so emacs remains responsive. My mail-fetching script also runs mu after mbsync's finished, to index any new messages.