If you’ve ever manually set up an email account, you’ve been asked about your email provider’s POP or IMAP server settings. These are the necessary instructions that the email program needs before it can retrieve email from your account.
Just like your address and password are unique to your email account, the IMAP and POP server settings are unique to each email provider. For example, the IMAP server settings for Gmail differ from those for Yahoo, and the IMAP settings for both companies differ from those for their own POP servers.
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So you have two options, but which one do you want? What’s the difference between IMAP and POP? Is IMAP better than POP? Can you use IMAP and POP or do you have to choose?
Below is everything you need to know about IMAP and POP, including the advantages and disadvantages of both, as well as links on how to set up email using IMAP or POP
Difference between IMAP and POP
IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. POP stands for Post Office Protocol. Both are used by the mail program to download messages from the mail server.
Thus, no matter which email service you use, if you want to access your mail outside of their website, you must use specific IMAP or POP server settings for that service.
However, there is a big difference between IMAP and POP When you communicate via IMAP, the email program can manage messages directly from the server, including marking emails as read, deleting them from the server, moving emails between folders, and more.
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Anything you do in the mail program will also run on the mail server, so any other mail client connected to this account via IMAP will experience the same changes.
POP is limited to downloading emails only. When you use POP mail servers, your mail program cannot send commands back to the server like IMAP After the messages are loaded, whatever you do with them is not reflected on the server.
If you delete them or move them to other folders, you will only see the changes in this email program, not through the webmail interface or any other email program you use with this account.
Should I use IMAP or POP?
This decision is entirely up to you, but IMAP is your best bet.
If you want maximum flexibility, you should choose IMAP over POP You will be able to access your email on any number of devices and they will all be in sync. When you delete an email from your phone, it will be deleted when you check your messages on your computer or tablet. Sending an email to one device will appear in the sent field on the other device. This is most reasonable for most people.
However, if your email provider provides you with limited storage space for emails, POP is preferable. Consider an example where you have a measly 200MB of email space. If you use IMAP and want to keep all your email forever, you will quickly run out of space.
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However, you can use POP to download emails to your computer instead, where you have more storage space. As long as you set up your email account to delete emails from the server after they are downloaded, you will never run out of server space, but you will also never lose your message (if you have a backup of them on your device).
If you prefer as little customization as possible, you should choose IMAP Most email providers turn off POP by default, but leave IMAP access open. If you choose to use POP, you may need to first enter your email settings from a web browser to enable POP access.
As you can see, the choice really depends on you and your situation. You can choose IMAP for its features, but you might run out of storage space if you store too many emails, or you can choose POP to never run out of storage but miss out on the handy sync features.
How to use IMAP or POP
Many modern email clients allow you to log into your email via a web interface, where all you need to know is your email address and password. But if you are entering IMAP or POP settings, there are some other details you need to know.
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These are the IMAP and POP server settings for some of the common email providers.
SMTP: Important but Different
POP and IMAP aren’t the only mail server settings you need to know when setting up email on your device. The first two are for downloading mail, and the SMTP settings are for sending mail.
If your device is not configured with the correct SMTP server settings, the client will not know how to send mail from your account. You may have a problem loading mail, but you will not be able to successfully send new messages.
Most mail services use an SMTP server such as smtp.server.com. For example, Gmail’s SMTP server is just smtp.gmail.com. Others, however, are slightly different, such as Outlook.com: smtp.office365.com.
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