Over the past year or so, I’ve spent a lot of time on various e-mail related forums. I’ve seen many posts similar to “Help! I’ve marked a message as read in my email client, but it’s still not marked as read on my iPhone/BlackBerry/other computer.” In 9 out of 10 cases, this is simply because the user is using POP3 instead of IMAP. This leads me to wonder: why the heck are people still using POP3?
Today, with the exception of some ISPs and low-end free email services, most providers support IMAP. Assuming your email provider does support IMAP, why would anyone pick POP3 over IMAP? Is it purely because of old habits, miseducation, or is there an actual reason?
Let’s go through the basics of POP3 versus IMAP first. In many ways they are similar. However, they differ in one significant way: POP3 was built to let the server hold your email until you download it (and then delete it) while IMAP was built to actually store your emails on the server.
From a provider’s point of view, it makes a lot of sense to recommend POP3 over IMAP. The more users pick POP3 over IMAP, the less storage the email provider will need (which is why many ISPs only offer POP3). Their costs will go down. Moreover, the importance of redundant storage decreases, as a meltdown in the datacenter only means the loss of messages waiting to be downloaded instead of the entire email archive. The enduser is responsible for maintaining backups and providing storage.
From a customer’s point of view, I can only think of one rational argument for why someone would pick POP3 over IMAP. That argument would be storage quotas. If you use POP3 (and chose not to leave the messages on the server), you will never run into a problem with storage, even if your provider offers a fairly low storage quota. The reason for this is obviously that the messages are not stored on the server, but rather on your local machine. Hence, the ‘quota’ for POP3 is your local machine’s storage capacities.
A common myth is that IMAP is harder to set up than POP3. This is really nothing but a myth. For instance, in Thunderbird, the steps of setting up a POP3 or IMAP account are pretty much identical. Perhaps setting up IMAP was more difficult than setting up POP3 in the past, but today, that’s really not the case.
So what does IMAP offer that POP3 does not?
Synchronization across multiple devices
Today most of us have at least two devices to check our email with (e.g. a desktop client and an iPhone). If you’re using IMAP, when you mark a message read on one device (be it your iPhone or your desktop client), it will automatically be marked as read on the other devices too.
Allows you to stay more updated
Today, most IMAP servers support something called IMAP IDLE which means that instead of having to check in with the server every n’th minute, the server will automatically tell the client that a new email just dropped in. There’s also Push-IMAP, which is even more sophisticated.
A free backup of your email
The way I think of it, IMAP offers a free backup of all your emails. As many Sidekick users recently learned the hard way, you should not rely on just one instance of your data (even if it’s in the cloud). IMAP offers one ‘free’ backup of your email in addition to your local copy. If you’re using POP and the hard drive of your local machine decides to stop working, all your emails are gone (assuming you do not have backups). That said, it is still wise to make copies of your email to a secondary IMAP server. I personally use YippieMove to make a complete backup of all my email to a secondary IMAP server every other month or so. (Full Disclosure: Email Service Guide and YippieMove are both owned by WireLoad, LLC.)
With all of this in mind, I can really not think of any rational argument for why someone would pick POP3 over IMAP (other than lack of knowledge). Moreover, if your provider does not support IMAP, it is probably time to switch to a more modern provider that does anyways. The majority of the providers in our database do support IMAP.
Update 1: This article started a really interesting discussion over at Email Discussion.
Hi,
While I agree that IMAP has greater functionality for those who need to have access to their accounts — and all available folders — from multiple devices, I (no email power user by any means) can get by using POP and simply setting my email client to “leave message(s) on server.” Accessing the account on two computers (using Outlook on one and Opera 10′s email client on the other) leaves me with two local copies and one web copy of each email. Then, when convenient, I login to the my webmail and move the messages to desired folders (or delete them). I also have all incoming mail autoforwarded to a Google account as further back-up, which account I organize only once per month or so. So that makes 4 copies. So back-up and storage is a non-issue for me, i.e. I personally have no need to access my email via IMAP to achieve those goals.
As far as a reason for this choice (of POP over IMAP), I guess it’s because I like the simplicity of a quick download of all mail from the account’s Inbox into my clients’ inboxes (using one, global inbox). No waiting for synchronising + purging or anything. And I can easily move (to another offline folder) or delete a message in one of my offline clients w/o a second thought (as if it will be similarly moved/deleted if it were an IMAP account).
I know these things don’t prove POP to be better than IMAP. It’s just that I can achieve — to my satisfaction — some of the same desired results w/o the using the more full-featured IMAP.
To each his/her own, I guess. :-)
I use POP3 precisely because IMAP was designed to keep emails on the server. I do NOT want my private emails sitting on someone else’s machine any longer than it has to. I want them on my computer where I can be assured of privacy and know that backups and availability are not in the hands of someone else who may or may not be doing a good job of it. Considering how cheap disk space is now, there’s no reason not to keep your email. I have almost every email received or sent by me since the mid 1990s, except for removed spam. You’re welcome to your IMAP, but I will never use it.
Murple,
You do bring up a valid point, POP3 is good from a privacy point of view.
From a privacy point of view I tend to think that if you don’t trust the server you have the email on, you’re in trouble regardless. They can choose to store your email, POP or no POP. Encrypted email is what you need at that point (PGP, GPG).
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