Yes, all of our email accounts support IMAP.
IMAP stands for “Internet Message Access Protocol”. It allows you to download e-mails from the server to your e-mail program the same as POP does. However, the difference is that when you request your e-mail from the server it sends a copy rather than sending the entire e-mail. It keeps a copy of the e-mail on the server while simultaneously keeping a copy on your computer.
You may be wondering what happens if you have certain messages on your local computer and IMAP has different messages on the IMAP mail server? IMAP has built in intelligence to handle this task. When you connect the IMAP mail server with your local computer, it senses that there are differences between the local computer and the mail server. It then synchronizes both so that they have the same information.
For example, if you delete messages, compose more and have sent others, this information will be synced up with the IMAP server so that the IMAP server will delete the copies of the messages that were deleted. By the time you log off the IMAP server you have two complete copies of all of the e-mail tasks performed: one on the IMAP server and one on your local computer.
Advantages
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POP |
IMAP |
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Relatively straightforward |
Much slower but more redundant |
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Faster (sends your e-mails and gets e-mails from you) |
Keeps a copy of everything you do on the server |
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The downside is that if you lose e-mails on your computer you have lost them forever (unless you have saved a copy on the server) |
The downside is that it takes up more space |