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IMAP Vs. POP Email Accounts
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If you have ever setup your own email account through an email program such as Outlook or Outlook Express, you may have been given the choice of either an IMAP or POP for your email account. Some ISPs will not give you a choice and make you select one over the other. But you may have wondered what the other one offers.

IMAP and POP accounts are really not so different. They are both designed to send and receive emails. Both are protocols that do the same job but in different ways. What truly distinguishes the two is how that email is stored.

POP stands for Post Office Protocol. POP is very straightforward. It is a simple protocol that stores emails on an email server until a request is made for any new emails and then it is sent to your computer via an email program. When email is sent to your computer, the whole message is sent and it is no longer on the email server. It is now on your computer. There is a way around this by setting your email preferences to be set to keep a copy of any emails requested on the server.

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. IMAP works like POP when sending and receiving emails. It makes the appropriate requests when asking for email and sends email just as efficiently. But where POP sends the complete message to the requesting computer and no longer stores it on the email server, IMAP keeps the email. Only a copy of the email message is sent to the requesting computer and the original is kept on the email server. IMAP is very dynamic in nature. It keeps both the email server and your computer in sync and any changes in one system will make the same changes in the other. If an email is no longer on the server but is on your computer it will make the appropriate changes to keep both systems the same. So as you delete your emails they will also be deleted from the email server.

POPs simple and straightforward design makes it very fast. But if you delete an important email it is lost forever. IMAPS redundancy makes it useful if you want to keep your emails in case you need them later. But this safety comes at a price as it is slower than POP. Which is better is dependent on what you find more important to your needs.
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