With tons of clients asking me how to set up their email accounts once I grant them access to their hosted website, it’s vital to know what is what. Honestly, I had no idea what IMAP was all for and it really frustrated me, during the automatic account process on Thunderbird, when it seemed to be the default setting. It took me a lot of energy to bypass it, but reading what it’s all about I now understand it.I wont suggest it to my clients, since I really can’t offer them the tons of space they need, but there is a solution through Gmail. So if you need all of your email with you, IMAP is the way to go. And if you don’t know how to set it up, ask a professional or even Alexandros who has written the above article and I personally propose as a professional! Find him on twitter: @ageor
With email dominating a good part of our communication, mailbox management is an ever growing issue. This is primarily intended for people who access their email from at least two different email clients (webmail counts as one) and people who share a mailbox with others.
I want access to my email via webmail and offline acceess on my two laptops and mobile phone. Worse than that, I am using 2 different email clients on each laptop (one I regularly use and one I am trying). So, I frequently get to answer the question “How to best setup my client(s) to receive email; POP3 or IMAP4?” for myself and others. As usual, there is no single answer. However, there may be a proper email setup strategy for some scenarios. Good understanding of the tools will, hopefully, help determine which one it is. First, some background:
- Webmail
Webmail is actually a web-based email client. As such, it is accessible from a web browser and it talks directly to the email server instead of transferring emails locally.
Webmail can be a one stop shop, provided there is access to the email server, which probably also requires Internet access. Yahoo! mail, Hotmail, Gmail, the upcoming Facebook Social Inbox etc. are full fledged email clients that can receive, send and manage emails, complete with antispam, folders and address books. A webmail user has no need to know about protocols to enjoy complete use of an email system, unless he would also like to access email offline. In that case, use of an email client like Pegasus, Eudora, Outlook Express, Outlook (yes, they are different), Evolution, Thunderbird etc. (forgive me if I missed your mailer of choice) is required.
SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) Not to be forgotten, SMTP is the protocol that sends email. It is used by all email clients in both POP3 and IMAP4 configurations.
POP3 (Post Office Protocol v3) POP3 ia a protocol for one way transfer (reception, downloading) of email from the server to the client for offline use. It is supported by all of the above (and more) mailers.
Once an email is succesfully received by the email client, it is, typically, erased from the mailbox at the server. Thankfully, most mailers allow the user to modify this behaviour so the mailer leaves the email at the server’s mailbox as well, either indefinitely or for a preset amount of days. Not erasing an email from the server is so important that Gmail (basically a webmail system) supports setting emails to not be erased on the server side, in case email clients are setup wrong.
So, when we need to have our mail delivered to more than one clients, we can set them up so they don’t erase downloaded emails from the server. This way, email stays on the server ready to be downloaded again or to be accessed via a webmail client.
IMAP4 (Internet Message Access Protocol v4) IMAP is also supported by all of the above (and more) mailers. It is usually perceived as another protocol to receive email. Well, it is not! It ia actually a protocol to synchronize folders on the email server with folders on the email client(s). Email reception is, effectively, a subset of that.
So, what exacly is the difference and why is it important?
