IMAP is great for people who want to access their messages on more than one device. IMAP stores all your messages, both sent and received, in the cloud until you choose to delete them. Your devices download all messages, leaving a copy on the server.
When a message is deleted on one device, it’s deleted on the server which, in turn, informs your other devices, and is then deleted on your other devices, also. The result is, all of your messages are kept in sync across your devices.
What’s more is, your sent messages, and draft messages are also stored on the server, allowing you to begin a draft on one device, and continue writing on another.
IMAP is, in most cases, is preferred, providing simplicity in managing email across multiple devices. Simply put, IMAP saves all your emails in the cloud.
POP, on the other hand, downloads all your email messages onto your device. Once downloaded, the email messages are discarded from your email server (after a set period of time) and cannot be accessed through other devices anymore.
In actual fact, when adding a POP account, you can specify a duration before the messages are deleted from the server after they’ve been downloaded, i.e. 7 days, 1 month, never, in order to allow for your other devices to download messages.
But the result is, as email on each of your devices is managed independently, and you will end up with inconsistencies between devices. There are some instances where POP will be appropriate, but in most cases IMAP is preferable.
![](http://howtouseamac.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/pop3-imap.jpg)
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