POP3 could be seen as the older and dumber of the two protocols and works on a connect, collect,
disconnect relationship with the mail user agent (email client) having most of the responsibility. On the other
hand the fact that it is so simple, widely supported and makes minimal use of server resources is the reason it is
so widely used.
IMAP, in comparison, is a more capable protocol and has more responsibility in the relationship with the
email client. Mail is kept on the server and the email client just requests a copy which it will cache locally.
Among some of the features that IMAP has over POP3 include; it allows an ongoing connection with the
server, multiple client access to the same mailbox, email folders, server-side searches, partial mail retrieval and
more.
Licensed to Menshu You
Zend Framework in Action (Ch010) Manning Publications Co. 14
If you, like Bert, were needing to access your mail from multiple locations and/or from multiple devices
such as a PDA, mobile phone, laptop then IMAP would be a better solution because each device would simply
be accessing the mail rather than collecting it.
Email storage
In contrast to the official internet standards we have described so far, such as the email format outlined in RFC
2822, MIME, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP, the file format for email storage is not standardised.
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