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POP3 and IMAP are two different ways of doing the same thing. That is, reading your email. If you have used email before but you have never heard of either, then chances are you have been using POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) to read your emails. To save you some reading, if you were happy with your email before, then POP3 is probably just fine for you. It has been the internet standard for many years and contiues to be the most widely used method of collecting emails in use today.
However, in recent years a new protocol called IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) is gaining in popularity because it has a number of beneifts. Of course, depending on your point of view it could be said that it has some drawbacks too.
When you read your mail via POP3, your computer will download all messages from the server, delete the copy on the server and disconnect. This makes it particularly sutiable to modem users as they can disconnect their modem and read their emails (now stored locally) "offline".
When you read your email using IMAP, the messages remain on the server. The connection to the server remains open the whole time you are reading your mails, and mail is not deleted from the server until you "purge" items marked for deletion. This makes IMAP particularly suitable for people with an always-on broadband connection, or people that want to read their email in many locations. On the other hand, this means that IMAP is not really suitable for people using a modem, since they must stay connected whenever they are reading their mail.
There are a couple of other things worth noting. Firstly, because IMAP messages are rarely deleted from the server, you are more likely to fill up your 4uk disk quota. To address this we purge messages automatically from your inbox every 120 days by default. You can change this setting from the control panel.
Also, when using IMAP, it is possible to create sub-folders within your inbox where you can archive important mail. This method allows you to view your "spam" (junkmail) folder along side your inbox so that you can conveniently check to make sure no genuine mail is caught by the spam filter.
Finally, if you wish to collect POP3 messages in more than one location, it is possible to configure most email clients to "leave messages on server". This will allow you to download them in another location and still be able to work offline.
If you are still unsure which to use, please use POP3. It's cheaper, easier and it will do everything you need.
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