Surely everyone will have had to deal with an email client, on their computer or mobile phone. When you need to configure the reception of e-mails on a computer program such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird or if you use a mobile phone or smartphone capable of connecting to your Email account, any email address you have can be read if you configure it as a communication of incoming mail, IMAP or POP .
It then becomes interesting and useful to know what this means and what advantages you have to configure an IMAP or POP3 server .
IMAP is short for Interactive Mail Access Protocol, while POP means Post Office Protocol .
Both are email protocols that allow you to read emails locally using an external application or program.
POP is the original protocol, created in 1984, as a means of downloading e-mail messages from a remote server.
IMAP was designed in 1986 to allow remote access to messages stored on a remote server.
Basically, the main difference between the two protocols is that if you are using a POP3 account , the emails are downloaded from the server and saved locally, while IMAP leaves them on the server and caches the emails (temporarily) .
In other words, IMAP is intended as a cloud storage.
This is the answer to the question: " If I use an email client to download messages from Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo Mail on the computer, I can also view them online on the related website or they disappear">
The two protocols, POP3 and IMAP work differently:
Using POP, the program connects to the server, recovers all mail, keeps it locally as new unread mail, deletes messages from the main server and disconnects.
POP's default behavior is to delete mail from the server which means you can no longer see it if you access your email account via browser.
In mailboxes and clients, however, there is the option to keep a copy of the messages on the server without deleting them.
Using IMAP, the computer or mobile phone program connects to the mail server, requests the content of the new messages and presents them by saving them in the cache.
If the user reads the message, modifies it or marks it as read, these changes are also accepted at the server level.
The IMAP workflow is a little more complex than that for POP, which is why not all email accounts and Email clients support IMAP.
In practical terms, POP follows the idea that mail is only accessed by a client (e.g. Outlook) so mail can be saved locally (e.g. on the computer)
The advantages of using POP3 are 4:
- Emails are stored locally and are always accessible on your computer or mobile phone, even without an internet connection
- Internet connection becomes necessary only for sending and receiving mail
- You save server storage space (because the messages never remain inside it)
- There is still the possibility of leaving the copy of the messages on the server.
IMAP was created to allow remote access to messages stored on an external server.
The idea was to allow multiple clients or users to manage the same mailbox . So, if you check the arrival of new emails both from home and from work, you can see the messages organized in folders as happens by accessing the mail from the server itself (for example by connecting to Gmail.com or Yahoo Mail).
All changes made to messages on your computer or mobile phone are immediately synchronized with the server.
The advantages of IMAP are 6:
- Mail is saved on the remote server and is accessible from multiple different locations
- Internet connection is required to access mail
- You can get a quick overview of the emails because only the headers are downloaded at least until the content of the messages is also required.
- You save disk space on your computer and mobile phone.
- There is no risk of losing any message if the computer is broken because the mail remains online on the server.
- It is still possible to save the emails locally
In conclusion, which protocol to choose to configure an email client on a PC or smartphone?
This depends on your specific needs and, to clarify what they are, you can say that:
It is better to use POP If you access e-mail from a single device, PC or mobile phone, if you need constant access to e-mail to check the messages already read, regardless of the availability of the internet.
POP3 is useful even if you are using an e-mail service with limited space.
It is better to use IMAP if you want to access mail from multiple different devices, both from mobile phones and from different PCs, if you have a reliable and constant Internet connection and if you receive many messages of which you only want to know the subject, for a quick look.
IMAP is also excellent at keeping an online copy of messages and being able to access them from other computers around and not to save mail locally if the PC is used by other people, for reasons of privacy.
When in doubt, where possible, I always recommend using IMAP because it is the most modern protocol, which allows flexibility and fully exploits the potential of mailboxes such as Gmail and YAhoo Mail, with organization in folders and unlimited space.
You can always archive important emails locally on your computer client.
Hoping that everything is clear now, let me know if you will change your choice and which protocol you prefer to manage your inbox.
In other articles:
- How to configure Microsoft Outlook or other clients with GMail
- Send and receive Hotmail and Yahoo Mail emails with Outlook or other mail programs
- Receive alerts on your computer for new incoming Email messages
