Take a look at this collection of example IMAP server sessions. Essentially whenever you see PERMANENTFLAGS
contain \*
, the server will support user-defined flags.
To add to that list, here is an excerpt from a Gimap (Google Mail IMAP) session:
* OK Gimap ready for requests from 192.0.2.1 5if380490pzk.17
a login username password
* CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE NAMESPACE QUOTA ID XLIST CHILDREN X-GM-EXT-1 UIDPLUS COMPRESS=DEFLATE
a OK username@gmail.com authenticated (Success)
b select inbox
* FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Draft \Deleted \Seen)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Draft \Deleted \Seen \*)]
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 2]
* 1089 EXISTS
* 0 RECENT
* OK [UIDNEXT 2371]
b OK [READ-WRITE] inbox selected. (Success)
c logout
* BYE LOGOUT Requested
c OK 73 good day (Success)
And similarly, a session from Exchange 2007:
* OK Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 IMAP4 service ready
00000000 CAPABILITY
* CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 AUTH=NTLM AUTH=GSSAPI IDLE NAMESPACE LITERAL+
00000000 OK CAPABILITY completed.
[...]
00000003 SELECT INBOX
* 1 EXISTS
* 0 RECENT
* FLAGS (\Seen \Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Draft $MDNSent)
* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Seen \Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Draft $MDNSent)] Permanent flags
* OK [UIDVALIDITY 472] UIDVALIDITY value
* OK [UIDNEXT 7] The next unique identifier value
00000003 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed.
I was unable to find a session from Exchange 2010.
So it's not universal -- with Exchange being the notable abstainer -- but it sure is more common than not.