Most of my accounts are POP, with only one being IMAP. In my discussion in this thread, I've been referring to one of my POP accounts.
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POP3 and IMAP are two different protocols (methods) used to access email.
Of the two, IMAP is the better option - and the recommended option - when you need to check your emails from multiple devices, such as a work laptop, a home computer, or a tablet, smartphone, or other mobile device. Tap into your synced (updated) account from any device with IMAP.
POP3, Post Office ProtocolPOP, or Post Office Protocol, is a way of retrieving email information that dates back to a very different Internet than we use today. Computers only had limited, low bandwidth access to remote computers, so engineers created POP in an effort to create a dead simple way to download copies of emails for offline reading, then remove those mails from the remote server. The first version of POP was created in 1984, with the POP2 revision created in early 1985.
POP3 is the current version of this particular style of email protocol, and still remains one of the most popular. Since POP3 creates local copies of emails and deletes the originals from the server, the emails are tied to that specific machine, and cannot be accessed via any webmail or any separate client on other computers. At least, not without doing a lot of email forwarding or porting around mailbox files.
IMAP, Internet Message Access ProtocolIMAP was created in 1986, but seems to suit the modern day world of omnipresent, always-on Internet connectivity quite well. The idea was keep users from having to be tied to a single email client, giving them the ability to read their emails as if they were “in the cloud.”
Compared to POP3, IMAP allows users to log into many different email clients or webmail interfaces and view the same emails, because the emails are kept on remote email servers until the user deletes them. In a world where we now check our email on web interfaces, email clients, and on mobile phones, IMAP has become extremely popular. It isn’t without its problems, though.
Because IMAP stores emails on a remote mail server, you’ll have a limited mailbox size depending on the settings provided by the email service. If you have huge numbers of emails you want to keep, you could run into problems sending and receiving mail when your box is full. Some users sidestep this problem by making local archived copies of emails using their email client (e.g. Thunderbird) on a desktop pc or notebook, and then deleting them from the remote server.
In Short: Which Do I Use to Set Up My Email?Depending on your personal style of communicating and whom you prefer to get your email service from, you can pretty quickly narrow down how you should use your email.
- If you use check your email from a lot of devices, phones, or computers, set up your email clients to use IMAP.
- If you use mostly webmail and want your phone or tablet to sync with your webmail, use IMAP, as well.
- If you’re using one email client on one dedicated machine (say, in your office), you might be fine with POP3, but I recommend IMAP.
- If you have a huge history of email and you’re using an old mail provider without a lot of drive space, you may want to use POP3 to keep from running out of space on the remote email server.
- If you use an Exchange Server, EWS (Exchange Web Services) will give you similar cloud-based syncing, like IMAP.
- If you don’t use Exchange Server and you want email sync,use IMAP.
In general, I recommend that you use IMAP for your different mail accounts because it keeps your various email clients and Smartphones in sync.
