It"s been over a year since Microsoft hinted that it would add support for the older IMAP protocol to Outlook.com. Today, the company revealed that IMAP support has now been included in its free email service on top of its support for the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol.
In a post on the official Office blog, Microsoft says that while it believes EAS is a "more robust" protocol than IMAP, there are still some devices such as Macs that have yet to support EAS. More importantly, the addition of IMAP also allows third party developers to create add-ons for Outlook.com, which was previously not the case.
Several companies are already rolling out IMAP add-ons for the service, such as TripIt, which automatically detects any emails with travel information and imports them into a TripIt itinerary. There are also some shopping-based add-ons for Outlook.com to check out such as Sift, Slice and motley*bunch.
Yet another add-on, Unroll.me, quickly stops unwanted email newsletters and puts the rest in a consolidated newsletter that a person gets just once a day. The OtherInbox add-on gives even more options on how users can manage their Outlook.com email account. Developers who want to make add-ons for Outlook.com can check out Context.IO, which has just announced that its API now supports Microsoft"s service.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft