An email program such as eM Client can retrieve your emails using different protocols. Two of the most common protocols are IMAP and POP3. So how do they work?

POP3 protocol downloads the emails from Inbox to a specific device from the server. Once the emails are downloaded, the originals are deleted from the server. This means that if you’re using POP3, the emails are tied to a specific device and can’t be viewed on other devices without forwarding them.

IMAP, on the other hand, is not tied to a specific device. Instead, you can view your emails on any device because the emails are stored on a remote server and not on an individual device. A good example of this would be when you check your Gmail account on your phone, through your email client on your desktop or through the web interface on your laptop and you see the same messages in each case.

Most of today’s mail servers support IMAP, even though there are still exceptions. If there’s only a small storage space available on the server, synchronizing messages through IMAP would quickly lead to hitting the limit so only POP3 might be available. Fortunately, eM Client supports both IMAP and POP3. You can therefore use whichever type you prefer, depending on your server.