Getmail is a mail retriever designed to allow you to get your mail from one or more mail accounts on various mail servers to your local machine for reading with a minimum of fuss. getmail is designed to be secure, flexible, reliable, and easy-to-use. getmail is designed to replace other mail retrievers such as fetchmail.

• simple to install, configure, and use
  
• retrieve virtually any mail
  
  • support for accessing mailboxes with the following protocols:
    
    • POP3
    • POP3-over-SSL
    • IMAP4
    • IMAP4-over-SSL
    • SDPS (Demon UK's extensions to POP3)
    
    
  • support for single-user and domain mailboxes
    
  • retrieve mail from an unlimited number of mailboxes and servers
    
  • can remember which mail it has already retrieved, and can be set
    to only download new messages
    
  
  
• support for message filtering, classification, and annotation by external programs like spam filters and anti-virus programs
  
• support for delivering messages to different destinations based on the message recipient
  
• reliability
  
  • native safe and reliable delivery support for maildirs and mboxrd files, in addition to delivery through arbitrary external
    message delivery agents (MDAs)
    
  • does not destroy information by rewriting mail headers
    
  • does not cause mail loops by doing SMTP injection, and therefore does not require that you run an MTA (like qmail or sendmail) on
    your host
    
  
  
• written in Python, and therefore easy to extend or customize
  
  • a flexible, extensible architecture so that support for new mail access protocols, message filtering operations, or destination
    types can be easily added
    
  • cross-platform operation; getmail 4 should work on Unix/Linux, Macintosh, and other platforms. Windows support available
    under the free Cygwin package.
    
  
  
• winner of various software awards, including DaveCentral's "Best of Linux"