When you add a new email account to your device, you may have noticed there are two types available, but what is really the difference, and is one better than the other?
What are the PROS and CONS of POP and IMAP?
They are very different, and based on how many devices you have and how you expect your email to behave it can make a big difference on you and the space used on your server.
POP stands for Post Office Protocol and IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and they are different ways of delivering email to your device.
We should also mention this usually only applies to email that is on your own server or from your employer, it doesn't apply to web based services like Gmail or Hotmail. Although they have options for POP access, but we'll cover that in another post.
So let's start with POP email first, the one most people are familiar with and using the most often.
When someone sends you an email it is stored on your web server.
When a POP email program checks for mail, that message is copied to your program and then deleted from the server.
If you then check for email using a different computer, it will find no messages.
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The first computer to check will download the messages and delete them from the server. There is a setting to Leave a copy of messages on server. But this can complicate things and create duplicates and is generally not recommended.
PROS:
Email is copied to your computer, some see this as a more secure method. If the web server is hacked your messages are not there.
Since emails are downloaded and deleted, the web server never runs out of space.
CONS:
If you want to read a previous email you must do it on the same device.
You can have emails spread across multiple devices and it can get confusing.
If your device suffers an irreversible problem, you could lose all your messages.
IMAP is getting more popular because many of us are more mobile than ever before. We have multiple devices checking emails, and we don't want to be stuck to just one.
Think of IMAP as more of a synchronization process instead of just downloading messages. When your email program checks for new messages, it copies the new messages and does not delete them from the server.
When another device checks for email, it can also get all emails,
It is actually synchronizing all emails, so any other machine will be completely up to date and get all the emails the first device has.
This is a two way synchronization. Meaning it will also copy sent messages from all machines. So if you send an email from the desktop, you will see a sent copy on the laptop and the reverse is true. As you can imagine this is very handy, if you sent a message from your office machine and later on the road wanted to modify and send the same message to someone else it can easily be done.
PROS:
Synchronizes new messages, does not delete from the server.
Synchronizes sent messages also, they are kept on the server.
All devices have all new and sent messages
CONS:
If the web server is hacked, all messages can be read including sent messages.
If your web server provider gives you limited space you could get a mailbox full since a copy of all messages and attachments are stored there.
To summarize, it would be best to get a web server from a provider that gives unlimited space (and traffic while your at it). That way you don't have to worry about storage limits. Make sure they support IMAP emails, set them up with strong secure passwords and you can be very productive.