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Searching for the Holy Grail.........
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I hate to disagree with people on here but email in windows and unix is sort of "my thing". Been administering a number of mailservers for years even though I retired from that business a long time ago. If it is business you are using email for, it has to be POP3 really (Post Office Protocol 3) the final ruleset for POP3 is set out in RFC1939 (request for comment) the earlier RFC1081 can pretty much be ignored.
IMAP has it's place and you can run a mailserver as both IMAP and POP3, useful in business.
Not strictly true, I have my mail client on my phone set to delete from the server if deleted on the phone so I am filtering-on-the-go so that when I sit down at night I only get my email that I want. For instance, email confirmations that my Amazon order have been delivered. I don't need to keep an email telling me an order has been delivered, I see it, I note it, we are good.
I would disagree with this. POP3 works, has been improved and the traffic is secure if properly configured. I run all my mailboxes across four devices without issue. Above it was noted that POP3 might take up server space. It might, but not on the scale IMAP can. If you are a business and you need to archive email, POP3 would work for you because you can set the email client to leave the message on the server and just archive the lot, daily weekly whatever. If it is IMAP the email has gone and you really need to be in the back of your email server to retrieve everything (although you might delete the email and to all intents and purposes it has gone, there is still a copy on the (correctly configured) server) I roll my email over at every gigabyte or so across four servers and as I use plain text there is a lot of email there so a deleted email can be retrieved, for the average user this is impossible and puts another layer between management and the Geeks so not popular.
Others who administer IMAP servers principally may disagree with me but POP3 has worked well for me for more years than I care to think so I will not be changing anytime soon. I suppose over the years email and server admin has become a sort of hobby for me, it interests me and realistically, I don't trust my correspondence to anyone else, I do it myself. I will say though, there are some very good, very secure email service providers out there. Stopping Spam email is not trivial and server side requires a degree of skill and knowledge to get it right. Gmail is good, it filters out the dross quite well and has good antivirus server side, Fastmail is good, very configurable and although not free the old adage applies, you get what you pay for. Hotmail is popular though their t&c's are changing (have changed). iCloud is okay but I am not a fan and there are numerous other email providers, bigger and smaller. If, as in the case with the OP, you are not very tech savvy my advice is to go with a provider who will give you good support or you can get good community support to solve any issues you may have.
Just to be clear, IMAP and POP3 are just protocols and you configure your email client for example Outlook, to be either POP3 or IMAP. The server can be locked server side to not accept requests from POP3 or IMAP clients but this is unusual. (or may not be nowadays, I have not personally used a "free" email service for years now).
IMAP has it's place and you can run a mailserver as both IMAP and POP3, useful in business.
Deleting an email from a POP3 device means the email still exists on the server so will also be visible on IMAP devices.
Not strictly true, I have my mail client on my phone set to delete from the server if deleted on the phone so I am filtering-on-the-go so that when I sit down at night I only get my email that I want. For instance, email confirmations that my Amazon order have been delivered. I don't need to keep an email telling me an order has been delivered, I see it, I note it, we are good.
POP3 has been around since 1988 and was never intended for scenarios where people would have multiple computing devices. It's really outgrown its use so if you have the option to use any other protocol (IMAP being the most prevalent) then do that.
I would disagree with this. POP3 works, has been improved and the traffic is secure if properly configured. I run all my mailboxes across four devices without issue. Above it was noted that POP3 might take up server space. It might, but not on the scale IMAP can. If you are a business and you need to archive email, POP3 would work for you because you can set the email client to leave the message on the server and just archive the lot, daily weekly whatever. If it is IMAP the email has gone and you really need to be in the back of your email server to retrieve everything (although you might delete the email and to all intents and purposes it has gone, there is still a copy on the (correctly configured) server) I roll my email over at every gigabyte or so across four servers and as I use plain text there is a lot of email there so a deleted email can be retrieved, for the average user this is impossible and puts another layer between management and the Geeks so not popular.
Others who administer IMAP servers principally may disagree with me but POP3 has worked well for me for more years than I care to think so I will not be changing anytime soon. I suppose over the years email and server admin has become a sort of hobby for me, it interests me and realistically, I don't trust my correspondence to anyone else, I do it myself. I will say though, there are some very good, very secure email service providers out there. Stopping Spam email is not trivial and server side requires a degree of skill and knowledge to get it right. Gmail is good, it filters out the dross quite well and has good antivirus server side, Fastmail is good, very configurable and although not free the old adage applies, you get what you pay for. Hotmail is popular though their t&c's are changing (have changed). iCloud is okay but I am not a fan and there are numerous other email providers, bigger and smaller. If, as in the case with the OP, you are not very tech savvy my advice is to go with a provider who will give you good support or you can get good community support to solve any issues you may have.
Just to be clear, IMAP and POP3 are just protocols and you configure your email client for example Outlook, to be either POP3 or IMAP. The server can be locked server side to not accept requests from POP3 or IMAP clients but this is unusual. (or may not be nowadays, I have not personally used a "free" email service for years now).