POP versus IMAP
So you just bought a new Mac, you have signed up for your own domain and want to setup your own email. What’s the best route to take when you are blasted with technical jargon at every turn. Let’s find out.
What First?
You have just clicked on the [+] button to add a new email account to Apple Mail, under the Accounts preferences tab, but the first choice you have to make is to select either POP or IMAP. Which one?
Well the answer lies in the requirements of the way you will interact with your email. POP itself is a protocol that allows you to download your emails and their attachments to the system you are accessing them from. IMAP on the other hand is a protocol that allows you to access and review the emails on the remote email server before downloading the emails, and or attachments in order to access the actual data contained within them.
So How Does This Affect You?
Start by asking yourself a series of questions. Firstly, Is this the only machine you will be accessing your emails on? Perhaps you will access webmail at work, or have more than one computer, one at home and one for the road. are you backing up emails at home? Does your email host provide backups? How big is your email inbox and associated folders?
These are questions you might not have answers to immediately, but I would work on the following rule of thumb:
If you have more than one computer, or you will be accessing your emails via webmail, then you should consider using IMAP. If you do, then you need to find out if you have enough space on the email server to be able to store all your emails there. If not then you need to ensure that you do good housekeeping and download and archive older emails to a designated Mac system at home, or in the office as is relevant to your needs. In addition you have access to all your sent emails, along with those organized into various folders on the server itself.
If you are only using a single, or multiple accounts on one computer, then I would consider using POP. This allows you download the emails and attachments to your computer for safe keeping. If you want, you can either remove the emails immediately from the server, after collection, or leave them there for a specified period of time, potentially indefinitely, if you have enough space and want a secondary backup of your emails.
Can You Change Around Later?
In short, yes. Nothing stops you switching from IMAP to POP and downloading your emails to your Apple Mail Inbox. And by the same token, doing the reverse and uploading large amounts of email and attachments to the server to be access via IMAP.
The Best Solution
The key to all of this is just good housekeeping and ensuring that you are aware of the state of your inbox at all times. I often find people hit problems, because they are not aware that they have a finite limit on their email inbox and it reaches that limit. They don’t react to the emails they received from their provider telling them the inbox is at 80, 90 and 100% of capacity and so the inevitable occurs.
Imagine your email inbox like your own letter box, and you can quickly see how, if you never collect the letters and junk that is stuffed in it, that it will quickly overflow. That’s why it is important to be a good email recipient and manage email properly,
Tags: Apple Mail, email, imap, pop