IMAP or POP3 ” What Should I Take?
November 8th, 2009
As long as I can think, I usually set up my email client on my computer, entered my login credentials and received my mails. When I got my laptop and started working in an office, some questions arouse. How should I receive my mails on all computers? Ahh yes ” I decided that the place, where I finally need ALL my mails is the office. Therefore I enabled the checkbox in my email reader beside Leave messages on server on my home computer and my laptop. I was now able to receive my mails at home and on the road with my laptop and got them all in the office, too. But there was this thing in my mind called IMAP which didn’t let me sleep. Probably I should take a look on this and see if this is the better way of handling my emails. So what are the differences and benefits of POP3 and IMAP? When should you use POP3 and when IMAP? Here we go:
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.
Which email protocol should you finally take? When you’re working on only one PC, then POP3 is the right one. Remember to delete emails from time to time, so that your mail account can’t run out of space. Alternatively you can set your email program to delete every mail automatically after receipt.
Use IMAP when you need your mails on several computers. Remember to store a local copy of your mails, when you want to work without direct connection to the mail server and make sure the mail server is not running out of space. When it gets too full, you need to delete or backup mails from the server.
Dominik writes for soft-evolution, a software vendor, specialized on team scheduling software. soft-evolution is developer of Pimero an Personal Information Manager which addresses the needs of small and mid-sized companies.
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Tags: calendar, contact manager, email client, internet, network calendar, network scheduler, organizer, outlook alternative, personal information manager, pim, planner, scheduler, teamwork
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