When setting up a new email account on your computer/phone/device, you will be asked to set up either a ‘POP’ account or an ‘IMAP’ account. Which one you should choose depends mainly on how you (and/or others) intend on accessing this new email account. All our servers support both protocols.
For most people, we recommend IMAP for general use.
We would recommend POP accounts for taking backups of your mail.
In short, you should choose POP if you are the only one accessing this email account and you will be accessing it from one device/location only. You should choose IMAP if you are accessing the same email account from more than one device (eg. on your PC and on your phone), or if multiple people will be accessing the same email account.
An IMAP account works by syncing your email client (such as Outlook, Thunderbird, iOS/Android mail app) with the server. This means that your emails remain on the server and your email client is only displaying what is on the server. If you set this email account up on multiple computers/phones/etc., all clients will display the same information. For example, if you send an email from your phone, it will show in the ‘Sent’ folder on your PC.
A POP account works by downloading the actual emails from the server onto your PC/phone/etc. If you then try to set the same email account up on another device, the emails will no longer be available to download from the server. Because of this, a POP account is a good idea if your hosting account only allows for a very small storage quota. It will also allow you to view your mail if you have no connection to the internet.
If you have any questions on the above, please do not hesitate to 'Open a Ticket' and we will be happy to advise further.