Both IMAP and POP3 are protocols that allow you to receive emails from a remote server. Your email client uses this protocol to connect to your mailbox server. You may have your email client on your smartphone, laptop and desktop, and this is where IMAP and POP3 have different uses.
Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) downloads mail from the server and often deletes it from the server after it has done so. This means that depending on when your mail client checks for mail, you'll only receive the email on one device or mail client. This also means when you delete an email from one device, it will not be deleted from another. For example, if you receive emails on your smartphone, deleting them won’t also delete them on your desktop mail client, so you will have an email that you have viewed appear unread.
Since POP3 downloads and saves emails from the server, losing or damaging your local storage may cause you to lose all your emails.
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) however, is suited for people who want to receive email on more than one device, which nowadays is most people who carry a smartphone. IMAP stores email on remote servers, rather than downloading them to local storage, which is how the emails can be viewed on different devices. When you read, download or make any changes to emails on one device, it will synchronize across any other device using the same account. IMAP can only download the (header) of an email, so it can be much quicker.
We recommend you use IMAP.
POP3 offers few, if any benefits. When you set up your mail client, you can choose from IMAP or POP3. To set up either, you simply need to access your email account information through cp.controlpanel.systems.
