POP VS. IMAP

POP VS. IMAP

POP VS. IMAP

IMAP and POP are two different protocols for handling eMail messages. The main difference between the two protocols is the way in which they control your mailbox folder on the server. To simply describe the difference, IMAP only shows you the messages on the server, POP will download the message from the server to your local machine.

IMAP stands for " Internet Message Access Protocol".

POP stands for " Post Office Protocol ".

IMAP:

The biggest thing I like about IMAP is that everything "all the messages" are stored on the server by default. So when you connect an eMail client to an SMTP server using IMAP, the eMail client will get a copy of the messages from the server and will store this copy on the user's local machine which means there is another copy of the messages on the server in case the user's machine crashes so the user will still have access to his/her messages on the server because these messages are stored on the server.

IMAP supports server side functions/commands such as marking message as read or un-read. For example, if you are using outlook/IMAP and you mark a message as read , this message will get marked as read on the server as well. This is useful because end users change machines all the time and when they setup their new machine with IMAP client, the status of the messages will remain the same.

IMAP allows the end users to store special messages on the server such as "Deleted Messages, JUNK eMail, Sent Items ". For the "Deleted Items/messages", it is up to the server to either Auto Expunge the messages on a delete command or just keep them with a line crossing them in the eMail client and the user will have to manually expunge the messages.

Although IMAP keeps all the messages on the server, these messages are still locally cached on the user's machine so the user will have access to his/her eMail client and messages if the server is down or if internet connectivity isn't available.

IMAP is really easy to configure and you can have an eMail client configured in couple of minutes. Also like POP, IMAP allows the user to use secure or non-secure connections ( TCP port 143 for non-secure or 993 for secure IMAP / IMAPs).

Another thing I really like about IMAP is that you are able to connect multiple eMail clients running on multiple machines to the SMTP server using the same user name and password. For example, I can use my Laptop from home while my desktop at work is running and also my mobile device. All at the same time without a problem.

All IMAP clients connected using the same user account are sharing the message status. ( read, un-read, replied to, spam, not-spam, deleted, etc).

With IMAP, you as an end user, have the ability to choose whether you want to synchronize the whole messages or just headers. Syncing just headers is faster than syncing the full messages specially when the user has so many messages and big mailbox.

Most eMail clients support the IMAP protocol and almost every SMTP server out there have an integrated IMAP4 implementation.

IMAP server implementation support mail-filters / server side rules so the end user can simply sort messages into different folders. For example, you can have a rule that will automatically move all incoming messages from certain eMail address"info@domain.com" into a folder called Info or any other folder in your mailbox. These rules are server side rules so whether your eMail client is open or closed, the server will still execute the mail-filter/ rule.

IMAP commands such as:

LIST

STATUS

CREATE

SELECT

FETCH

POP:

The POP protocol pulls down the messages from the SMTP server and stores them on the local machine and that gives the end user the ability to play around with these local database. The user can manually move them from one machine to another, they can be backed-up to an external drive in case of OS corruption or data loss or even a server crash. In this case the user will still have access to his/her eMail messages and can easily recover them by importing them back into the same eMail client he/she was using.

Performance is better when using POP because the messages are stored locally on the machine so when the end user issue a search query "for example, searching for an eMail message by subject, sender, recipient, or even a sub-string in the message body" , the search will be very fast and quick because the eMail client will be looking at a local file on the machine instead of going across the wire to search the messages on the server.

If the SMTP server is down , the end user will still be able to open up eMail client and have access to his current eMail messages because these messages are locally stored and the eMail client doesn't need to connect to the server to open or read these messages. So this also means whether the end users are connected to the internet or not, they are still able to use their eMail clients to read their existing messages "already downloaded messages".

POP protocol doesn't set any limit on the size of the user's mailbox. For example, the user mailbox can be as big as 10GB or even 20GB. I have seen a mailbox that is 38GB in the past which is huge. Note: with exchange/MAPI account, such a huge mailbox could cause several problems.

POP is really easy to configure and it doesn't take long as long as you have the server info. POP also allow the user to use secure or non-secure connections ( TCP port 110 for non-secure or 995 for POP3s/ secure POP3).

POP protocol is supported by almost every email client in the Market even legacy clients such as Outlook Express, Unix/Linux MDA utilities such as FetchMail. You can also simply write up a script using Python or any other language that can easily retrieve messages from the SMTP server using the POP3 protocol. All you will need to know is the POP3 commands such as:

USER

PASS

STAT

LIST

RETR

DELE

RSET

TOP

QUIT

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