Gmail IMAP is a service that helps users connect their Gmail account with third-party email clients like Microsoft Outlook. Hence, without a working server, Gmail can not function through these clients while using IMAP. The Gmail IMAP server, more precisely the site, imap.gmail.com site is currently down and this has left the Google Apps and Gmail users frustated because they are not able to use their email.
The Gmail service — mail.google.com – however, remains unaffected and working as usual.
According to Twitter, the server has been down for around two hours, while the famous website monitoring service Down Right Now claims that Gmail has experienced issues for the past three hours.
The alternative to IMAP — Gmail’s POP server — is working without any problems but, the outage is being expected to affect a large number of people, owing to the number of its users who connect their accounts to mail clients using IMAP.