Technical Help Centre - Gconnect - The Business ISP

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IMAP If God used email then it would probably be IMAP. IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) aims to address the shortcomings of POP. Imagine a mail service which you can access from anywhere, from any machine, at any time and still see your inbox and sent items, your long term project folders and mail boxes you share with other people. Imagine having your laptop stolen, or a fire at the office and still have all your mail intact. Well with IMAP that’s exactly what you get!   -   -   -   -   -   -

IMAP differs from other mail delivery systems, because the messages stay on the ISP’s mail server. The IMAP client simply reads the headers (Subject: From: etc) and then spools down the content as and when it is required by the user. This means that because the mailbox is always in-tact on a server, you can view and deal with the mail via a web page – a bit like Yahoo! and Hotmail. Gconnect supply 10MB of IMAP space with every POP account which allows our customers to utilise the web-mail interface. If customers choose to use only IMAP then we can transfer space to the account as and when required. Another massive advantage of IMAP mail is that the ISP backs up your mailbox for you. With POP the user is responsible as the mail is transferred directly to the client machine and deleted from the server. Gconnect backup all of the mailboxes on our IMAP servers every 24 hours in case of hardware failure. The other advantage is that our mail servers are high specification servers with built-in redundancy, usually more reliable than a desktop PC, which means the chances of loosing your mail is also greatly reduced. So What’s the Catch? Well, as with many things in life, there are advantages and disadvantages. However IMAP’s only real disadvantage is cost. Obviously if your company receives and sends a lot of email, it won’t take long to rack up Gigs of disk space, which is what we charge you for. But that’s what ISPs do for money! IMAP Related Links http://www.imap.org A site evangelising about IMAP http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc822.txt - The RFC for IMAP Mail Clients Supporting IMAP Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook Express Mulberry Eudora For a full list see: http://www.imap.org/products/showall.php