| IMAP vs. POP3 " What Are The Differences? |
| Written by Dominik Sapinski |
| Wednesday, 04 November 2009 15:37 |
|
How should I receive my mails today? Should I user POP3 or better IMAP? What are my options and what are the differences and benefits? When should you use POP3 and when IMAP?
How should I receive my mails today? Should I user POP3 or better IMAP? What are my options and what are the differences and benefits? When should you use POP3 and when IMAP? The POP3 setup. After you've entered your account credentials like your login name and password you need to make your first decision. Do you want to leave all received messages on the server or not. When you leave the message on the server, your account may run out of space after some time. When you delete emails after receipt from the server you can't get it on a different computer again. So, when you're working on only one single computer, it's better to delete mails from server immediately after you've downloaded them. With POP3 every received mail is stored on your local hard disk. Therefore it's no problem to read it when you have no internet connection. But what do you do when you have multiple computers or multiple users who should get the email? You guess right " you use IMAP. With IMAP you're working directly ON the mail server. Your email reader usually only receives a list of your email headers from the server which saves time and bandwidth on emails you don't want to read. The result is that emails aren't stored on your local hard disk. But you can tell your email program to save a local copy, so that you're still able to work with your emails in offline state. The next benefit of IMAP is that your folder structure, which is stored on the server, is the same on every computer you access your mails. Think of a family folder for your personal mails and a work folder for your business mails. What means this all for you? Use POP3 when you have only a single computer where you receive your emails and you're the only one who has to read the mail. Activate that emails should be deleted from the mail server when you have received them and you can forget about your mail account running out of space. Use IMAP when you have more than one computer or others should get the email, too. But you have to care about the mail server's space to not run full. You need to delete or backup mails from time to time. When you're often on the road and don't have internet access, make sure you store an additional copy of your mails on your hard disk. About the Author: Dominik writes for soft-evolution, a software vendor, specialized on team scheduling software. soft-evolution is developer of an Outlook Alternative which addresses the needs of small and mid-sized companies. |
