Which is better to use, POP or IMAP and why?

[rlanza1054]

Hi,

I've heard here that some people despise POP mail and some people despise IMAP.

I've heard here that some people love POP mail and some people love IMAP.

Can you guys tell me which one you like and just a short reason why.

I have a few email account and there is only one that I am forced to use POP, the others I can choose between the two.

And no, I don't have MS Exchange.

Thank you!

Rob

[dmglouis]

I have to say I'm loving IMAP on the Pre. The main reason being emails read on the Pre show up as read on the web interface (of my school email).

[akarol]

IMAP also allows you to use Push so you get your emails on your device immediately as they arrive on the email server.

[jhoff80]

IMAP by far. If you use multiple devices to check your email, which pretty much anyone with a smartphone does, it just doesn't make sense to use the more primitive POP3.

[ryleyinstl]

I think it all depends on what your needs are. Do you want the messages cleared off the server after accsess? Do you need/want to see the messages on multiple computers, phones or other devices? Is a backup copy of e-mail important to you?

I like IMAP (or EAS for Exchange/Outlook) as it allows for the most flexibility.

[Coolcrush]

Originally Posted by jhoff80

IMAP by far. If you use multiple devices to check your email, which pretty much anyone with a smartphone does, it just doesn't make sense to use the more primitive POP3.

winner.

[hparsons]

There really is no "better", it truely does depend on your needs. IMAP leaves the email on a server, and syncs between multiple devices. POP3 puts the email on the device and does not sync. Some POP3 clients (I don't believe the Pre's email client is one of them) allows you to leave the email on the server, so another client can also pull it down.

One of the problems with IMAP is that if you tend to keep a lot of email, you may have too many on your (relatively) limited device. Some IMAP clients allow you to pick which folders you sync, and this helps with that problem.

For me, IMAP works better overall. However, I use POP3 to pull my email from my mail provider to my local Exchange server, then use EAS from the Pre to get it from my exchange server. That way, I don't have to mess with SPAM and get all the traffic (I leave that to my mail provider), but have the advantage of EAS.

[gabbott]

IMAP for sure if you use more than one device or client to check mail.

[jbinbi]

I keep every email sent to me. I delete from my inbox to my deleted folders, and shift delete bad stuff.

I many times need to look up something and with google for outlook, I just search, and it will find it my sent email/inbox/deleted.

I have a pop account, so I download everything from my server. Over 40k total emails over the last 10 years.

Will I am waiting for the pre to come to vzw (hopefully on day 6mo +1 from sprint release), I have a BB, and what I do is have a forward from my pop account to my bb account. I read and respond if I am away from my computer, then when I get back to my computer, at end of day or so, delete all emails from BB. I have looked at IMAP , but it normally requires an exchange package, which currently most Web hosting packages limit to 2G without adding lots of $. My outlook pst file is 4+G, so this is not a good cost effective solution for me.

This may not work for everyone, for Pre users you would need to create another pop account (web hosting usually has lots for free anyway) that you redirect email to.

If you work for a large company with managed email via exchange, of course you already have imap. My rant is for those with pop or limited exchange accounts.

[cdaniel76]

Originally Posted by hparsons

IMAP leaves the email on a server, and syncs between multiple devices.

Can you clarify this for me a little more?

When I first got my Pre, I used the "auto' way of setting up my yahoo email account and it set it up as an IMAP. I liked having emails pushed to me automatically, but contrary to what you say, if I deleted an email from my phone, I could not see that same email when I got home and opened up my Yahoo on Outlook.

I subsequently deleted that email profile and manually set up my yahoo as a POP account on my Pre. Now I can tell it to leave the email on the server.

[oddlou]

Originally Posted by cdaniel76

Can you clarify this for me a little more?

When I first got my Pre, I used the "auto' way of setting up my yahoo email account and it set it up as an IMAP. I liked having emails pushed to me automatically, but contrary to what you say, if I deleted an email from my phone, I could not see that same email when I got home and opened up my Yahoo on Outlook.

I subsequently deleted that email profile and manually set up my yahoo as a POP account on my Pre. Now I can tell it to leave the email on the server.

Depending on your settings, IMAP will sync all your mailboxes, be it in outlook, on gmail's/yahoo's webmail, or on the pre. So, if you delete on your pre, it'll delete on outlook. You should stilll be able to find deleted items in your deleted items folders.

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by cdaniel76

contrary to what you say, if I deleted an email from my phone, I could not see that same email when I got home and opened up my Yahoo on Outlook.

That's exactly what he said. On IMAP, everything is on the server and synced back across all devices, so you get the same email whether you go into your account on your phone, on your PC, or any other computer.

[bobodobo]

I understand why everyone else prefers IMAP but personally I prefer POP. I have tens of thousands of emails and keep them on my laptop (I back it up daily of course) so I have access to all my emails and all their attachments even when I have no internet access. Storage capacity is limited only by hard drive space. If I'm traveling without the laptop (or without tethering, WiFi, etc.) I can pop the messages to my phone but leave them on the server, then download all the messages to my laptop later.

If I worked primarily off of my phone (or multiple devices) and always had internet access then of course IMAP would be better.

[Insp_Gadget]

@Bobo... You can do the same thing with IMAP. Just move the older e-mails the you no longer need on the e-mail server to a PST file. Every three months or so, I move the older e-mails to a PST. I never have problems with space on the mail server and I still can access older e-mail.

The major advantage for me though is that I can easily access my e-mail from any e-mail-capable device without having to worry about where the mail is stored (downloaded).

But whatever works for you, it's all good.

[hparsons]

Originally Posted by cdaniel76

Can you clarify this for me a little more?

When I first got my Pre, I used the "auto' way of setting up my yahoo email account and it set it up as an IMAP. I liked having emails pushed to me automatically, but contrary to what you say, if I deleted an email from my phone, I could not see that same email when I got home and opened up my Yahoo on Outlook.

I subsequently deleted that email profile and manually set up my yahoo as a POP account on my Pre. Now I can tell it to leave the email on the server.

You've lost me on the "contrary to what you say" part. You IMAP account behaved as I described. It synced. When you deleted the email from your phone, that synced to the server, and deleted there, which also synced to your Outlook client, and showed it deleted there.

I've not set up any accounts on my Pre as POP accounts, so I was not aware that the Pre allowed you to leave the email on the server; but I did qualify my statement by saying "I don't believe" the Pre's email client has that option. I stand corrected.

[cdaniel76]

Originally Posted by jhoff80

That's exactly what he said. On IMAP, everything is on the server and synced back across all devices, so you get the same email whether you go into your account on your phone, on your PC, or any other computer.

I don't think you understand what he or I are saying... He says IMAP leaves mail on the server. I understand that to mean that if I delete an email from my phone, I should still be able to receive it on my home computer later on.

However, this is not what's happening when I use IMAP on my Pre. If I delete it on the Pre, I cannot get it on my home computer later on. It's gone.

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by cdaniel76

I don't think you understand what he or I are saying... He says IMAP leaves mail on the server. I understand that to mean that if I delete an email from my phone, I should still be able to receive it on my home computer later on.

However, this is not what's happening when I use IMAP on my Pre. If I delete it on the Pre, I cannot get it on my home computer later on. It's gone.

No, I understand entirely, you're misunderstanding. POP pulls mail from the server and stores it in two separate pools. IMAP syncs with the server each time. With IMAP, if you delete it somewhere, it's deleted everywhere.

[cdaniel76]

Originally Posted by hparsons

You've lost me on the "contrary to what you say" part. You IMAP account behaved as I described. It synced. When you deleted the email from your phone, that synced to the server, and deleted there, which also synced to your Outlook client, and showed it deleted there.

I've not set up any accounts on my Pre as POP accounts, so I was not aware that the Pre allowed you to leave the email on the server; but I did qualify my statement by saying "I don't believe" the Pre's email client has that option. I stand corrected.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean when you said "IMAP leaves mail on the server"?

I took this to mean that if you delete it on the phone, I should still be able to receive it in my inbox on Outlook on my home computer. Is that correct?

In any case, yes, you can leave mail on the server from the Pre through a POP account... If you go into settings after setting up a POP accoutn, you'll see this:



Make sure the slider for "Sync Deleted Emails" is off and it will leave anything you delete from the Pre on the server for you can then receive it again at home.

[cdaniel76]

Originally Posted by jhoff80

No, I understand entirely, you're misunderstanding. POP pulls mail from the server and stores it in two separate pools. IMAP syncs with the server each time. With IMAP, if you delete it somewhere, it's deleted everywhere.

I understand what you are saying... But we're talking about two different issues here. In my experience, whenever anyone else says "it leaves mail on the server", like hparsons said, I always take that to mean that if you delete it from one device/computer, you can still get it on another one.

[rlanza1054]

Oh wow, I never expected such great responses!

You have all answered my questions!

I now know why I was using POP instead of IMAP.

Yesterday, I had to rebuild my Pre from scratch and I set up the email the way the Pre wanted, which meant that several email accounts went IMAP.

My original setup on the Pre was to manually make all of them POP.

This time I wanted to ask the question because somehow I knew there was a special reason why I liked and was using POP most of the time.

IMAP is great if you don't need to re-read the messages across multiple computers. And most of the mail is generally kept on the server. Such as AOL's IMAP feature.

However, on my home pc, I had setup my Road Runner account originally as POP (I think that's all they offered).

I also liked having the email stored on my pc at home, where I am responsible for keeping it in good shape and backing it up and saving what I wanted to save.

And because I use several computers, I used to have my main computer 'remove messages from server' when I used that computer. Hence, my Treo (what I used to have) could not receive mail during the day if I left my home computer on all day (which I did).

And I was generally happy with this.

Now with the Pre and all this 'synergy stuff', I decided to let the Pre be useful during the day and receive the email.

I switched the options on my home computer to 'leave messages on server, until deleted'. With this setting, I am able to receive the same email on all computers/phones.

But it does mean more housekeeping. A message that I read on my Pre, is still listed as 'unread' on my home pc when I get home. So I have to do more clean up work.

However, in the end, my messages are stored on my home pc and removed from the server.

I did set the option on the Pre to 'sync deleted email' to be 'ON'!

So if I delete the message off the Pre, I should not get it at home, but for some reason, I am getting all the messages at home.

I think this is happening, because my home PC is checking mail about every 15 minutes, whereas on the Pre, I have it set to check my email every hour.

I am so glad for all the opinions and suggestions.

It turns out in the end, it all depends on what you are doing and how you want to use your email accounts.

I think in my case, I am a POP person and willl be going back to POP on the few accounts that got setup as IMAP.

If as a personal user, Microsoft made a cheap, home exchange server, that might be something that would be the best of out of everything.

But right now, to run a MS Exchange Server from you house, is expensive (if you are not able to or willing to use a hot copy) and your ISP might not like you doing that. Remember, most home users do not have static IP addresses, so getting a domain name associated with dynamic IP is really impossible to do. (Unless, my knowledge of this is wrong).

Again, that you for a very interesting and informative discussion!

Rob