POP/IMAP Accounts

POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern e-mail clients and servers support both.

If POP is used, all email messages are downloaded from the email server to your computer and stored on the hard drive. With POP, outgoing emails are kept locally on your hard drive which can lead to a situation where you have different emails on each computer that you use to check email: home, office, laptop, etc.

If IMAP is used, all email messages are stored on the server and never removed. In most cases your email application creates a local cache of messages on your hard drive to speed up the opening of emails, but the originals are not touched. With IMAP, sent mail and drafts are uploaded to the server. Because of
this, you will see the same incoming and sent messages from any computer as long as your mail program is configured for IMAP.

The advantages of POP are:

• Messages load very quickly once they are downloaded.
• Messages are stored on your hard drive so they're not subject to server storage limits and quotas.
• Widely supported by ISPs and email providers.
• All email programs support it.

The advantages of IMAP are:

• Messages are stored on the server and are accessible from any computer and webmail anywhere in the world.
• Sent messages and drafts are also stored on the server.
• IMAP mail is backed up nightly on the server and can be restored.
• Ease of migration from one program to another program and from one computer to another computer/location.
• Ease of setting up additional computers to check your email, so no need to copy anything from one computer to another.

In summary, we recommend POP accounts to most of our clients where only one computer is used to check email, or IMAP accounts where different computers are used to check email, (or where different people check the same email account on different computers/locations.)