First designed in 1986, IMAP has been around almost as long as I have, and yet it’s still treated with suspicion by many users and is seen as a ‘new’ or ‘advanced’ way of accessing email; while POP3 is seen as the ‘safe’ option. Many users don’t seem to know what IMAP is or how they should use it – yet it’s actually the answer to many of the little niggles that users have when it comes to email.
So, here’s why we love IMAP:-
Keep your messages on the server - Way back in the early days of the Internet, hard drives were very expensive and ISPs were keen to make everyone download their email to their own computer. These days, that’s not an issue;so you don’t need to worry about transferring your email when you buy a new phone or PC, or losing your old emails when you reformat your computer. It also makes webmail services infinitely more valuable; we’re glad that the days are gone where webmail only showed your new emails – and it’s thanks to IMAP.
Seamless multi-device sync – As more and more people use email on their phone, laptop, desktop or between multiple users in the same office, IMAP truly gets to show off. With IMAP, messages are stored on the server along with information about them – whether they’ve been read or not, whether they’ve been deleted, and so on, and this is synced between every device connected to the mailbox. Read an email on your phone, and it appears read on your PC when you get home. Want to read it again? Flick it back to unread and your PC will sync that, too.
Choose what you download - One of the biggest frustrations with POP3 is that all new emails are downloaded; IMAP was designed to deal with that. Most mail clients allow you to choose which folders you wish to ‘subscribe’ to – this allows you to download only the emails that you want in a well-organised mailbox, saving time and complexity (and unnecessary notifications). As a sysadmin, I filter out my automated emails and check those a couple of times a day – only important emails from real people make it to my Inbox, and that’s what I download every few minutes.
On-server folders – Most people like to organise their email, and folders have long been the preferred way of doing that – even Gmail exposes ‘tags’ as folders when you connect with an IMAP client. IMAP means that your folders are available regardless of which device you use to connect; folders and their contents will sync seamlessly between devices.
Check for new messages quickly – Under the hood, IMAP was designed to be fast, and the IMAP server software that Heart Internet use is highly tuned to deliver fast indexing, searching and delivery to email to clients. By maintaining on-server indexes and being smart about how email is stored, we can delivery IMAP services that mean that downloading even a whole mailbox doesn’t take long, and once you’re set up, only new data needs to be transferred.
So, how do you connect to an IMAP mail server? With the same software that you’re already using for POP3 – just select ‘IMAP’ when setting up your account in Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail, on your phone or tablet, and enter the same details that you’d use for POP3 – server name, username and password, then you’re good to go!
So, there you go. IMAP’s not scary, and not only for ‘advanced users’ – everyone who uses email for their day-to-day communication can make it do more with IMAP.
