Let’s stop that today by explaining in layman’s terms what IMAP and SMTP are and how they work together.

And who knows, if space allows, we might also unravel the mysteries of POP3.

Keep reading to find out.

What is IMAP?

IMAP stands for Internet Access Message Protocol.

IMAP retrieves the messages so you bulk email marketing services can receive them in your email account. Its job is to retrieve email messages from the receiving server and bring them to your inbox.

Without IMAP, they would never reach your email account.

So, IMAP copies the emails from the receiving server to your email account. It’s important to note that IMAP keeps your email account on the server and the one you use in your email client or service synchronized. This means that any changes you make on one device, such as reading or deleting emails, will be reflected across all devices connected to that email account.

Simple, right?

Speaking about simple:

What is SMTP?

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.

While IMAP is concerned with receiving emails, SMTP is all about sending them.

SMTP takes an outgoing email from your account to the sending server and then to the receiving server.

As you can see, SMTP has more work to do than IMAP.

Dream team?

You can probably guess by now how SMTP and IMAP work together.

SMTP is like a postman sending a message and bringing it to your postbox.

The good news is that you don’t have to walk to your postbox to retrieve the mail because IMAP does it for you

You just open your inbox, and there is the results for espndeportes email. You never knew how emails got to you, but now you do.

POP3: The 3rd protocol

POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol.

We don’t know what’s up with all the fancy names, but POP3 is another simple concept.

POP3 retrieves the message from the server to a single account or device and then deletes the message from the server

POP3 was commonly used for offline email clients (like desktop email apps), but its use has declined in recent years.

To summarize:

POP3 is retrieve and delete, while IMAP is retrieve and synchronize.

Not that complicated, after all

Technical concepts like IMAP and SMTP can betting data sometimes be overwhelming because of the technical terms involved.

However, after doing a little research, we often find that it wasn’t hard to understand at all.

Hopefully, you’re now feeling the same way about IMAP and SMTP.