POP vs IMAP

Detailed Explanation:

• POP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Protocol
• IMAP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol

Quick Explanation:

• POP: By accessing your email via POP, you download all your emails to your local workstation. Upon download, emails are automatically removed from the remote mail server. You can allow the email to be left on the remote server via your advanced settings within your local mail client (e.g. Outlook). The benefit to utilizing POP is that you will not consume space in your email hosting account.
• IMAP: By accessing your email via IMAP, you are accessing emails stored on the remote mail server. Emails are only removed from the remote mail server if you delete any emails manually. The benfit to utilizing IMAP is you can access the same emails from multiple computers. Also, all emails are available via your web based account (http://mail.YourDomain.com).

The Best of Both Worlds:

Often users wish to access email in multiple locations, but don't want to fill up their email hosting account. If you setup a POP account, you can just specify to leave the email on the mail server for xx days. That way all your mail workstations can download the same email and still be accessible on the web based account.