IMAP enabling a POP3 only E-mail account

Question

I've currently got an email account with a provider that only allows me to connect using POP3

I would like to use IMAP to access this account. I can't move email providers

Are there any services that offer IMAP access, but download the emails via pop3, from another account? I would also need to configure it to send email as well (through the same email address)

Answer 1

Gmail. You can use a Mail Fetcher through Gmail to grab email from your POP3 account, then use Gmail IMAP to access your email. As a bonus, you can also use your POP3 provider's SMTP server through Gmail to send email.

Ack, putting all the links in took too me much time, and someone beat me to the same answer.

EDIT
Caveat: You cannot set a time interval for Gmail to fetch your POP3 email. I believe that it sets a time interval based on the frequency at which you receive email in that account. You can, however, fetch mail manually.

Answer 2

GMail allows you to connect to any e-mail account using POP3, and has IMAP access as far as I know.

Plus, it's free.