{"id":3975,"date":"2025-10-01T12:08:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T11:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/knowledgebase\/imap-vs-pop-which-should-i-use\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T14:00:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T13:00:57","slug":"imap-vs-pop-which-should-i-use","status":"publish","type":"kb_article","link":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/knowledgebase\/imap-vs-pop-which-should-i-use\/","title":{"rendered":"IMAP vs POP: Which Should I Use?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>IMAP and POP are two ways an email app can collect mail from a mailbox.<\/p>\n<p>For most customers, IMAP is the better choice.<\/p>\n<p>IMAP keeps your email on the mail server and synchronises it with your devices. If you read, move or delete a message on one device, the change should also appear on your other devices. This makes IMAP a good option if you use email on a phone, tablet, laptop and desktop computer.<\/p>\n<p>POP usually downloads messages to one device. Depending on the settings in your email app, it may remove the messages from the server after downloading them. This can be useful in some older setups, but it often causes confusion if you check email from more than one device.<\/p>\n<p>We recommend using IMAP unless you have a specific reason to use POP.<\/p>\n<p>If you are setting up a new email account, check our email settings article or contact support if you are unsure which option to choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IMAP and POP are two ways an email app can collect mail from a mailbox. For most customers, IMAP is the better choice. IMAP&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","kb_category":[7],"class_list":["post-3975","kb_article","type-kb_article","status-publish","hentry","kb_category-email"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb_article\/3975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb_article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/kb_article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb_article\/3975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4094,"href":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb_article\/3975\/revisions\/4094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"kb_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.4uhosting.co.uk\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb_category?post=3975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}