Bamboo Cricket Hosting supports both POP3 and IMAP, the two most popular protocols for accessing email. While setting up your email in an email client you will inevitably be asked which protocol you would like to use. In most cases, POP3 is used by home users, and IMAP is used by business class users, however there are benefits to IMAP which home users may want to take advantage of and business class users may wish to take advantage of the speed of POP3.
The primary difference between the two is that POP3 is typically handled on your local computer. Your email client downloads the full message and in most cases deletes the message off our server once it is downloaded. IMAP on the other hand only downloads the header of the email you are downloading. Once you go to read the email it downloads the full message.
IMAP allows your email to be portable, anywhere you check your email with IMAP (including webmail), it will be the same, if you delete it off your computer, it is deleted off our server. The big disadvantages here are that it is slower because you are relying on our server. You also need to make sure you keep your email organized and cleaned up, otherwise your email usage will cut heavily into your overall hosting account usage.
POP3 allows you to save disk space (since the emails are automatically deleted) and stay organized locally. It also has the advantage of being much faster since you are always dealing with emails locally instead of having to rely on our servers.
What's best for you? We couldn't say for sure but the most popular protocol is definitely IMAP, so when in doubt, that's your best choice.
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