Practically everyone who has a computer or a modern mobile device uses email services. Yet, not many know how those operate. In our London Laptop Repair Service, we get to troubleshoot emails quite a lot. It is surprising, how many people still use an obsolete technology, POP3, to send and receive emails. This article is mainly for people who created their email addresses a while ago. As leading majority email services use the newer technology, IMAP, by default.
When an email is sent to you if does not go to your computer directly. Firstly, it goes to an email server. Afterwards, it is sent to your computer of a mobile device from the server. So, POP3 and IMAP are protocols that connect your email server with your email client, an app or a program that let you open and browse emails. In other words, it allows you to send and receive your emails.
When developers invented POP3 they intended it for use on only one client. However, many of us today uses numerous clients. We browse our emails on more than one computer or laptop, alongside with our phones and tablets.
While IMAP is designed to be used on multiple devices, synchronising content of email boxes on all of them simultaneously. Keeping emails on the server and making them available for download on multiple devices is an advance feature of POP3. It may not be always available. Synchronisation is also an advanced feature. If you delete an email on one client. It may remain available on the other. If anything happens to your device IMAP will always keep your emails on the server. So you can view it from anywhere. Which is not always the case with POP3, where losing emails on your device may mean losing them for good.