POP and IMAP are 2 protocols used for managing electronic mail on our devices.
They are utilized for handling emails by applications such as Thunderbird, Outlook, Apple Mail, Spark, and others.
POP (Post Office Protocol) is the oldest of the two. It was created in 1984 as a way of receive emails from a remote server.
IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), was created to allow access to emails that are stored on a remote server.
The main difference between the two is that the POP transfers emails from a server to our device permanently.
Whereas IMAP preserves them on the server and their storage is done temporarily on our device.
Advantages and disadvantages of POP/IMAP:
-POP:
- Advantages:
– The correspondence is stored locally, so it is always accessible even without an Internet connection.
– An Internet connection is only required for sending and receiving mail.
– It saves storage space on the server hosting the emails, as old emails are automatically deleted from the server.
– There is an option to leave a copy of the mail on the server, providing flexibility if needed. - Disadvantages:
– POP is not designed for managing emails across multiple devices. Therefore, issues may arise even if we leave a copy of the email on the server. For example, if an email is deleted on one device, this deletion is not synchronized with the server, so other devices will still have that message.
– Since each device downloads every message from the server, it’s easy to end up with a large number of duplicate emails.
– Retrieving emails from the server using POP technology can consume significant storage space on our device.
-IMAP:
- Advantages:
– It is designed to allow multiple users to manage the same inbox emails.
– So, whether you connect from your home or work computer, you will always see the same emails and folder structure, as they are stored on the server. - Disadvantages:
– The only significant disadvantage of IMAP, is that most providers offer limited storage space on the server.
So what do we choose;
We choose POP:
- When we need constant access to all our emails.
- When we have limited storage space on the server.
We choose IMAP:
- When we want to access our email from multiple devices.
- When we have limited storage space on our device and sufficient space on the server that hosts the emails.