I am trying to build a Python program for small business.My customers will send their orders in plain texts via email to me. My first thought is to use Gmail as my email server so I could write a small IMAP Python program to check for incoming emails from my Gmail account. However, I am worried that Google has a limit for email checking frequency (i.e., polling) and/or bandwidth. If I am checking new email once every 10 seconds, I'm concerned that Google will lock my account in just a few minutes - I'm afraid to even try this.I am not experienced enough to set up my own email server in a Linux box yet. What options do I have? Will upgrading to Google Business email solve this problem, or are there any other vendors that provide IMAP servers which offer more bandwidth and permit increased email checking frequencies?
What is the maximum frequency for checking email in Gmail, and are there alternatives?
email;gmail
There are reports of login limits and accounts becoming temporarily frozen, sometimes requiring a Captcha login. If that occurs, then you'll be delayed in receiving orders...This seems like a very inefficient business solution - emails from different servers can get blocked, rejected, etc... Have you thought about using Python (or PHP) for a server-side application, like a simple form mailer? Using that, you can save the orders to a text file on the same server so you'll have a backup, as well as email them to you.