free mail clients for windows that support pop3 or imap

FREE MAIL CLIENTS FOR WINDOWS THAT SUPPORT POP3 OR IMAP ANDROID
FREE MAIL CLIENTS FOR WINDOWS THAT SUPPORT POP3 OR IMAP DOWNLOAD

FREE MAIL CLIENTS FOR WINDOWS THAT SUPPORT POP3 OR IMAP ANDROID

Older desktop email programs may be configured to use POP3 by default, but even the Mail app on iOS and the Email app on Android support POP3 email accounts. IMAP is just an you choose when you set up your email account in a desktop, smartphone, or tablet email program. In a world where you have more than one device - or just want to leave your email online so you don’t have to worry about backing up and importing desktop email archives - IMAP is the best solution. While POP3 downloads all your emails and leaves you to manage them on your local device, IMAP just provides a “window” to your email account. If you delete an email, it will be deleted everywhere - not just on your local device. If you organize your emails into folders, your organization will be synced online. When you open an email, it’s instantly marked as read on your device, the IMAP server (for example, in the Gmail or web interface), and every other IMAP client you use.

FREE MAIL CLIENTS FOR WINDOWS THAT SUPPORT POP3 OR IMAP DOWNLOAD

Email attachments don’t download until you view them, unless you configure your email account otherwise. They don’t actually download until you open them - of course, you can configure your IMAP client to automatically download a certain number of emails.

IMAP synchronizes all changes to the server and treats your email server - not your local computer - as the primary place your email is stored.įor example, if you access an email account with 1000 unread emails with IMAP, you can access them instantly. Where POP3 just downloads everything to your device and manages it locally, IMAP is more of a syncing protocol. They won’t be synchronized online to all your other devices. When you change an email’s read status, star it, delete it, or organize it into folders, these actions will only be saved in the email program on your computer. Or, it may never be marked as read on the server, even after you read it. For example, if your email client downloads an email and you haven’t read it yet, it may just be marked as read on the server.

Your email actions won’t synchronize between your devices.

This is a dirty hack and it has a big problem, too: Instead, these services just mark them as read so they won’t be downloaded again. Some services try to bypass this limitation by not actually deleting emails when you access them from POP3. If your hard drive dies, you’ll lose those emails! This means that you have to worry about manually backing up your email program’s archive.

Your emails are stored on your computer, not the web server.

So, if you have new emails with large attachments, you have to sit there and wait while your program downloads all your emails to your computer.

POP3 relies on downloading all your emails.

In an age where you probably have at least smartphone as well as a computer, this is bad.

After you download the email to that device, you can’t access it on other devices.

You can only access your email on one device.

This made sense in the 90s - given the limitations of the technology - but it’s a big problem today. This was necessary at the time - you only had a few megabytes for email storage on the server, and you needed to keep it empty or emails directed to your address would start “bouncing” back to the sender. It would then delete the emails from your online email account. When you opened your email program, it would download all the new emails from your email provider and save them to your computer. You probably had an email address through your Internet service provider and they provided a tiny amount of email storage no their server - perhaps 10MB or so. It comes from a time when everyone accessed their email in a desktop email program on a single computer. While this was controversial, they’re at least pushing people in the right direction - away from POP3 and toward IMAP (or Exchange.) Microsoft refused to support POP3 with Windows 8’s included Mail app, requiring workarounds to access a POP3 email account. If you access your email via a web interface or an official mobile app - like accessing Gmail with the Gmail app on Android or iOS or accessing Microsoft’s Outlook mail from - you don’t have to worry about this. That email client is often a desktop program on Windows, Mac, or Linux, but it can also be a smartphone or tablet app. IMAP is a choice you make when you use an email client to access your mail. RELATED: Email: What's the Difference Between POP3, IMAP, and Exchange?

Free mail clients for windows that support pop3 or imap