Managing Email via IMAP vs POP3 vs Web-Based Email
Tuesday October 20, 2009 by Nick Niesen.
For the past ten or fifteen years the vast majority of our culture has relied on Web-Based Email and POP3 to read through spam filled inboxes, now, those days are over. In comes IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocal) a beautiful mix between the good old POP3 email you checked with your software based email client and everyone’s favorite (or least favorite) access-anywhere web based email. Though, don’t get me wrong, IMAP based email accounts didn’t just show up, the technology has been around for awhile though it has just recently started to become a very popular substitute.
More of a hybrid IMAP allows you to check and manage your email account on any number of computers or via your web-browser. Whatever changes you make are synchronized across all your email readers. Thus giving you the option to check your work email at home, your personal email at work, and have your changes saved across the board.
Away on a Caribbean Cruise? That’s no matter (just as long as you still have internet access and don’t mind paying unreasonable overseas internet access charges), just login to your email through your web browser, check your email, and when you get back to work, all the emails you read will be marked and everything you delivered will be in your email clients (Outlook, Outlook Express, Apple Mail) sent items folder.
So, though it might be slower, IMAP is a superior option to POP3 if you would find managing your email from multiple locations easier. If you only own one computer and have no need for all the bells and whistles, POP3 is the way to go. It’s fast and super-responsive, it’s just that you can only check it from one location. Web-based email? Until the internet speeds up, you’re going to have to keep clicking and waiting for pages to load in order to check your email. If you aren’t getting blasted with a massive slew of messages every day, web-based email may still be manageable.
Really, it’s all a matter of choice. I personally currently rely on IMAP, used POP3 for a good number of years and can understand why some people would choose Web-Based Email alone over either of the other options (bypassing software clients all together).
