The e-mail protocol is basically the procedure which your e-mail program will use to communicate with the server on which your e-mail messages are stored. Currently there are two ways to receive your mail from MBL e-mail servers: IMAP and POP. Following is a short comparison between these two protocols.
IMAP:
If you access your e-mail from multiple locations or you use webmail as well as a mail client, you will want to use IMAP. With IMAP, your e-mail and folders reside on the mail server. You can set up an IMAP mail client on multiple computers and be able to see all of your messages from all computers. IMAP is faster because it only retrieves the message headers when you check mail rather than the entire message. The message is retrieved when you read it. One drawback to using IMAP is that space on the e-mail server is limited, we therefore ask that you keep your mailbox clean. Please delete read and unneeded e-mails and empty your trash and sent boxes on a regular basis.
POP:
If you access you e-mail from only one location, and you use webmail only to retrieve unread messages or to send new messages, you can use POP. With POP, your e-mail and folders reside on your computer. Your email is NOT kept on the server. If you use POP, you are responsible for making backup copies of your e-mail. If you accidently delete e-mail, we will NOT be able to restore it as it does not exist on the server. POP is slower than IMAP because it downloads every message in its entirety to your computer - not just the message headers. If you have a very large message this could take a few minutes. The main benefit of using POP is that your mailbox size is limited only by the space available on your hard drive.
