If you’ve ever tried to setup an email account on your smartphone, tablet or computer you may have seen the terms IMAP and POP3. These terms represent two different protocols used to access emails. IMAP is recommended if you anticipate checking your emails from multiple devices, such as home computer, smartphone, work laptop, etc. because your data will update across all devices as it changes.

POP3 on the other hand will download an email from a server to a single device and will then typically delete it from the server, so when you access your email on a different device the email does not appear on the other device. For example, if you check your email on your home computer in the morning and receive/view a new email on it then check your email later in the day on your smartphone, the email you read on your computer will not show on your smartphone because it no longer exists on the server.