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POP, IMAP, and Web - Oh My! : An Email Primer

I’m sure you use email almost everyday, but you might not understand much beyond how to open up Outlook or your web browser to send and receive messages. Generally this is all you need to understand to function perfectly well for your general correspondence. If you’re a business person, however, knowing a little bit more can help you make the right decisions about how to have email set up to support your work.

First, your email address. What email address do you use for your business? Is it “me@yahoo.com” (or any other email service – gmail, aol, verizon, etc)? If you have a professional website, you probably have your own domain name (mycompany.com). If you do, you should really have your email reflect the same domain – “me@mycompany.com”. Every decent webhosting account will include some number of email accounts. You should really look into using them for your business correspondence. It just looks more professional.

Once you have set up your “personalized” email accounts, you will have various options for accessing your mail. Which you should use depends on a few factors.

If you are used to a web-based email interface (like yahoo or gmail) you might prefer to continue working on your email via a website. Your web host should provide a webmail interface for you to use. Most likely you would access it at “http://mail.mycompany.com”, or something similar. If you don’t like the webmail software your web host provides, you can look into accessing your email from a desktop application.

If you prefer to do your email using a desktop application (such as MS Outlook, or Eudora, or whatever other email program you use), you should be able to set up your program to access your new email account. You have two choices for accessing your email this way: POP and IMAP.

When you use the POP protocol, you are actually downloading your emails to your computer. With all your email stored locally, you can sort items into folders, delete messages, etc. Usually when you choose POP, the messages will be deleted from the server after you download your new mail. This is good if you have limited storage space on your email server, since only brand-new email will be stored there.

If you want to keep a “mirror” (a matching duplicate) of your email and folders on your server as well as locally on your hard drive, and server space isn’t an issue, you can use the IMAP protocol to download your messages, but keep them synchronized with your messages on the email server. Whatever you do with your email in your desktop program – create folders, delete messages, etc – the same action will take place with the messages on the server, so you will have an identical file structure on the server. The advantage of this is that if you need to access your email from a remote location, away from your usual computer with its desktop program, you will be able to see all your messages, not just the ones that haven’t been downloaded yet.

There are a few other things to keep in mind when deciding the best way to access your email. You might want to discuss the options with your web professional.

Web Action Steps

  • If you are currently using an email service that doesn’t utilize your own domain name, investigate what it would take to change that.
  • Check out the webmail interface provided by your website host. Even if you don’t like it enough to use it on a regular basis, being familiar with it will help you out in a pinch when you are out away form your own computer and want to check your new messages quickly.
  • Think about how you like to use your email:
    • Do you use only one device, or do you need to access your email from many locations?
    • Are you frequently using public computers (in libraries or internet cafes, for instance)?
    • What is the limit on your web host’s email server for message storage?
    • Do you get (or plan to get) a lot of email?
    • How do you like to deal with your messages – do you file them, archive them, or mostly delete them?
  • Decide on the best way to set up your access and do it!

Your email can be a vital communication tool for your business, especially if you set it up to best fit your working style. If you need help getting your website, domain name, and personalized email set up, contact me for assistance.