Mail Protocols

By: Team (Support)   Posted on: January 2, 2012

Basically, a protocol is about a standard method used at each end of a communication channel, in order to properly transmit information. The SMTP protocol can only be used to send emails, not to receive them. The POP3 and IMAP protocols are for receiving the mail from the server to your mail clients.

Depending on your network / ISP settings, you may only be able to use the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) under certain conditions. ##Read the posting for more details. SMTP uses port 25.

Main difference between IMAP and POP3 is the POP3 protocol assumes that there is only one client connected to the mailbox. In contrast, the IMAP protocol allows simultaneous access by multiple clients. IMAP is suitable for you if your mailbox is about to be managed by multiple users. Mail server for ns1. webcircuitindia.net, ns2.webcircuitindia.net are supporting only POP3 and SMTP protocol while the ns3 to ns8.webcircuitindia.net servers and mail hosting services supports IMAP, POP3, and SMTP protocols.

With POP3 (Post Office Protocol), the mail is "popped" off our server and onto your home computer. There's no synchronizing going on, just copying of mail files from one place to another. In most POP clients, you can choose to leave a copy of the mail on the server, or to delete it from the server when you download it. We suggest the 'delete it from server option' to avoid mailbox full problems. A step by step instruction for configuring mail clients is available in our support site. POP3 normally uses port 110.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) requires more disk space on the server and more CPU resources than POP3, as all emails are stored on the server. With IMAP your email client is constantly connected to our server, and doesn't make local copies of your messages. IMAP is great if you access your email from lots of different machines, since it keeps all the messages in one place.If mail box space is not a constraint, you can use the IMAP protocols. IMAP normally uses port 143.

IMAP protocols have following advantages over POP3 accounts.
  1. Files are stored on the server hence multiple mailboxes can be created on the desktop PC as well as on the server.
  2. Messages can be deleted directly on the server to make it more convenient to clean up your mailbox on the server.
  3. A whole message will be downloaded only when it is opened for display from its content.
  4. As this requires only a small data transfer because it only downloads the email headers until you choose to read a whole message, hence this works well even over a slow connection such as a dial up modem.


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