Have you ever lost emails from:

• a computer crash?
• working in multiple locations?
• moving email accounts to new computer?

IMAP email may be the answer.

A simple way to understand the advantages of IMAP email is to compare it to standard POP3 email.

Features of POP3 Email Model:

• The default setting in your email client (e.g. Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc) is to delete emails from the mail server after downloading to the local PC
   
• This setting may be overridden to keep a copy of the email on the mail server for X number of days. But the storage space provisioned is significantly less under POP3 hosting so accumulating mail on the server is not a suggested practice
   
• While email has not yet been downloaded to the local PC, it will remain visible through an authenticated webmail email client (such as Horde or RoundCube)
   
• Only emails in the inbox will be downloaded to the local PC and emails in other folders will not be downloaded unless manually dragged into the inbox first
   
• Once emails are downloaded to the local PC, this will be the only copy of the email. Backups become the responsibility of the PC user or assigned third party as emails are removed from the mail server after being downloaded
   
• The recovery from disaster is reliant on the local PC being backed up, and as such, a recovery could take days, and even worse, there is possibility of loss or corruption of emails. Disaster could be anything from office damage to hardware failure / virus damage / operating system failure
   
• Emails under POP3 are only accessed by a single person tied to single PC. This is a limitation of POP3 and this technique is to minimise the issue of downloaded emails being scattered across multiple machines
   
• POP3 mailboxes tend to be small in size. Costs are low but features are limited

Features and Advantages of IMAP email:

IMAP email is different and offers many advantages to POP3 email:

• Accounts setup under IMAP deliver email under a live synchronisation service. As such, emails are not needed to be downloaded to the local PC. This can be synchronised to any authenticated email client application and backups are done for you. So emails do not get removed from the server unless deleted by the user
   
• It is also possible with certain email clients to maintain a persistent offline copy of emails on a local machine even if internet access is not available. This protects your email from local machine failure and offers easier migration path to new hardware
   
• Emails are visible on all authenticated devices at all times
   
• Synchronisation of all folders (inbox, sent, and any newly created or existing folders) and individual emails rather than just inbox as in POP3 
   
• The servers are monitored and maintained 24/7/365 and the possibility of data loss is low, and times to recover from disaster (e.g. hardware failure / virus damage / operating system failure / hardware migration) is just a matter of the time to re-sync your account
   
• Supports the capacity to run a single account on many concurrent IMAP aware devices (e.g. laptop and phone). Also supports having multiple people share mail boxes (such as a group sales or a group accounts).
• This centralises emails and opens the possibility of organisation-wide email search by keyword / keyphrase (and there is no scatter of emails under this model)
   
• IMAP accounts require incremental space to store the email on the mailserver, so incur fees for space usage. However, total monthly fees for storage, usage, automatic backup, and 24/7/365 monitoring under an IMAP offering could cost less than a single hour per month of onsite IT consulting fee running backups (under POP3 or MS Exchange)