Advantages of IMAP for incoming email include:

• Great for cell phones, PDA's and other devices where storage is limited
• Allows user to view message header without retrieving full message
• Freedom for user to download attachments at will
• More server disk space
• messages are safe on server even if local computer crashes
• Very useful management over low speed links

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is gaining popularity as a replacement for POP email since more and more people are using more than one computer to manage their business. If you use a desktop computer in your office or home, and a PDA (Blackberry, other) or a laptop in any form of combined use, then IMAP email is the better service for you...and your clients!

IMAP allows the user to preview just the subject line and then decide whether or not they want to download the full email. This is especially helpful with PDA's that have limited storage.

Once downloaded to the active computer, the email still resides on the server and isn't deleted until the delete key is pressed.

IMAP is a premium mail service that includes spam filtering, virus scanning, more server disk space for storage, and it also allows for emailing larger file attachments.

IMAP has several key advantages over POP3:

• Email messages are stored on the server rather than on the local computer -
  This allows access to a mailbox from anywhere: home, work, or on the road. Every device which accesses the email will remain synched. Mailboxes can be shared between multiple users, with each user seeing the same content. While POP3 can only access a single Inbox, IMAP gives users the flexibility to manage multiple folders, keeping messages archived as they see fit.

• Larger Attachments -
  The IMAP allowed size is now 500% larger than our existing POP3 service. Increased attachment sizes allow users to receive bigger files such as digital photos, PDF documents, CAD drawings, and music.

• More Server Disk Space -
  With plans offering 100 MB, 250 MB, and 500 MB per email address, users can archive significantly more data than with our legacy POP3 service.

• Spam Filtering -
  Our Spam filtering software scans all incoming messages for unwanted content. The multiple folder support of IMAP permits the filter to place questionable email directly in to a Spam folder.

• Virus Scanning -
  As with all of our incoming email servers, all messages will be scanned for viruses.

More details about IMAP incoming email:

IMAP was designed to overcome some problems with POP behavior and provide more features for delivery and management of e-mail.

With IMAP, mail is kept on the mail server and is managed there by a series of commands sent to the server by your client. Copies of messages and attachments are transferred to an email client only when one requests them.

By default, only descriptive information about your messages is sent to your client. This works very well over slow links or for access from devices with limited computing or storage capacity such as a PDA, mobile phone or dialup internet access.

This feature makes downloading large attachments on a slow connection more manageable and efficient. In addition, the IMAP service provides folders for the user to store emails and attachments on the server so that they can retrieve those stored messages when they log into the server from different computers.

In practical areas where POP is weak, with respect to online/disconnected operation, these are strengths for IMAP, since online access was its original design center. These new features provide powerful benefits that allows the user to create folders for received and sent messages to be retrieved from any computer.

The advantage of IMAP is that it is more feature-rich and allows you to read your e-mail from any location and any device with IMAP support.

Complete feature and benefits list for IMAP:

• Robust folders for storing received and sent messages
• Freedom for user to download attachments at will
• Provision for determining message structure without downloading entire message.
• Selective fetching of individual MIME body parts.
• Server-based searching and selection to minimize data transfer.
• Ability to append messages to a remote folder.
• Ability to set standard and user-defined message status flags.
• Support for simultaneous update and update discovery in shared folders.
• New mail notification.
• Ability to manipulate remote folders other than INBOX.
• Remote folder management (list/create/delete/rename).
• Support for folder hierarchies.
• Suitable for accessing non-email data; e.g., NetNews, documents.
• In IMAP, when a client program performs any operation on a mailbox, the server will automatically include in its response notification of any new messages that have arrived since the last notification.
• IMAP's ability to manipulate remote folders other than INBOX is fundamental to online and disconnected operation. This means being able to save messages from one folder to a different one, being able to access archived messages subsequently, and allowing for multiple incoming message folders.