We send a lot of email these days—at work, at home, on our phones… But do you know what all the email jargon means? Keep reading to find out more about the difference between the various ways to receive email.
Whether you use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, or email configured on your own website—there’s more to receiving email than it might seem like on the surface. Today, we’ll be focusing on some answering some of the most common stumbling blocks when it comes to setting up new email accounts.
Email Clients vs Webmail
Before we explain the different protocols used to download emails, let’s take a few minutes to understand the simpler stuff—the difference between email clients and webmail. If you’ve ever started a Gmail, Hotmail, or other email account, chances are you’ve used webmail. If you work in an office and use a program like Microsoft Outlook, Windows Live Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird to manage your emails, you’re using an email client.
Both webmail and email clients are applications for sending and receiving email, and they use similar methods for doing this. Webmail is an application that is written to be operated over the internet through a browser, usually with no downloaded applications or additional software necessary. Email clients are programs that are installed on local machines (i.e. your computer, or the computers in your office) to interact with remote email servers to download and send email to whomever you might care to.
Here are some of the most used email jargon words.
POP3, Post Office Protocol
POP, or Post Office Protocol, is a way of retrieving email information that dates back to a very different Internet than we use today.
POP3 is the current version of this particular style of email protocol, and still remains one of the most popular. Since POP3 creates local copies of emails and deletes the originals from the server, the emails are tied to that specific machine, and cannot be accessed via any webmail or any separate client on other computers.
While POP3 is based on an older model of offline email, there’s no reason to call it obsolete technology, as it does have its uses.
IMAP, Internet Message Access Protocol
Compared to POP3, IMAP allows users to log into many different email clients or webmail interfaces and view the same emails, because the emails are kept on remote email servers until the user deletes them. In a world where we now check our email on web interfaces, email clients, and on mobile phones, IMAP has become extremely popular. It isn’t without its problems, though. Because IMAP stores emails on a remote mail server, you’ll have a limited mailbox size depending on the settings provided by the email service.
Microsoft Exchange, MAPI, and Exchange ActiveSync
MAPI is a way for applications and email clients to communicate with Microsoft Exchange servers, and is capable of IMAP style syncing of emails, contacts, calendars, and other features. This function of syncing emails is branded by Microsoft as “Exchange ActiveSync.” Depending on what device, phone, or client you use, this same technology might be called any of the three Microsoft products (Microsoft Exchange, MAPI, or Exchange ActiveSync), but will offer the same cloud-based email syncing as IMAP.
Because Exchange and MAPI are Microsoft products, only companies that own their own Exchange mail servers or use Windows Live Hotmail will be able to use Exchange.
Other Email Protocols
Yes, there are other protocols for sending, receiving, and using email, but most of us that are using plain old free webmail and mobile phones will be using one of these three major ones, so we won’t be spending time today talking about the others.
In Short: Which Do I Use to Set Up My Email?
Depending on your personal style of communicating and whom you prefer to get your email service from, you can pretty quickly narrow down how you should use your email.
-
If you use check your email from a lot of devices, phones, or computers, set up your email clients to use IMAP.
-
If you use mostly webmail and want your phone or iPad to sync with your webmail, use IMAP, as well.
-
If you’re using one email client on one dedicated machine (say, in your office), you might be fine with POP3, but we’d recommend IMAP.
-
If you have a huge history of email and you’re using an old mail provider without a lot of drive space, you may want to use POP3 to keep from running out of space on the remote email server.
Hopefully that’s dispelled a lot of your questions regarding these common ways we receive email data with our phones and computers.