Pop or Imap

What’s The Difference Between POP3 & IMAP?

 

pop or imap

POP3 & IMAP are different methods for retrieving email messages from mail servers on your computer.

POP3 (Post Office Protocol) is simple. When you check you email using a program such as (Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird) all the messages are deleted from the email Server. If you have access to the server via Webmail you’ll see that all the messages downloaded are no longer on the Server.

IMAP (Internet Messaged Access Protocol) doesn’t delete the messages from the Server, instead it synchronizes with the Server so that any changes you make in your mail program (Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird) will instantly appear on your webmail inbox. This includes uploading sent messages.

In simple terms, if you are using IMAP and mark a mail as read, it gets marked as read in your web based inbox too (because the changes are happening on the server). However, this won’t be the case if you are using POP, because the mails are downloaded to your PC and the changes won’t reflect on the server.

Here is a great video created by GoDaddy that explains the difference visually