What is IMAP?

10/17/2023

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and is a set of protocols that allows mobile and email desktop applications to access email on an email server. POP, in contrast, stands for Post Office Protocol, which downloads email messages to your device locally before deleting them from the email server. Both are used to access emails on an email server, but they’re both done in different ways.

The Difference Between IMAP and POP

The biggest difference between the two is how each receives emails. IMAP essentially copies email messages to your email app on your mobile or desktop device by pulling from the email server. POP, however, downloads email messages onto your local device and deletes them from the server. The easiest way to think about it comes from an example from CloudFare. Think of IMAP like it’s Google Docs and POP like it’s Microsoft Word. With Google Docs, your documents and changes, from both you and whatever collaborators you might have shared it with, are instantly saved on the cloud, regardless of device. But when using Microsoft Docs, if you’re working with someone else and you make a change to the document, the other person won’t see that change because you’ll only be saving that document to your local computer. Email apps that support IMAP include:

• Dreamersi – our web and email hosting option
• Gmail
• Yahoo mail
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Outlook – with options to change to POP, if users want to change it in the settings.

Why IMAP Is Better

With the rise of mobile devices, IMAP makes it easy to seamlessly transition when using phones, desktop, and tablet. Because of how users receive emails with POP, users won’t be able to access their email if they want to open their email in an app on a different device in cases of a lost, damaged, stolen, or even upgraded device. With IMAP, users can just open their email app on a new device without a problem because it’ll just redownload from the server onto the new device. So, using IMAP is a much more secure option than POP.

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