PROBLEM:
- You are in a situation where two or more people check the same account but have problems knowing who has acted on the message(s) or see a flagged message for your attention. This is further complicated by platform and email application (e.g. Outlook, Entourage and Apple mail).
- You are the only user but access your account from multiple computers.
SOLUTION:
Use an IMAP account. If you use IMAP then each person will be able to view all activity on the messages along with replies. If you are the only person, you can view all mail regardless of which computer you use. You can't do this with a POP account.
What's the difference between IMAP and POP?
IMAP works by keeping mail on the server. POP works by downloading your mail to your computer.
"IMAP" stands for "Internet Message Access Protocol"
IMAP is better than POP for accessing mail from multiple locations because it leaves the mail messages on the ISP's mail server. This lets you read the same messages regardless of what computer you use to read your e-mail. Messages you send are also stored on the mail server (if you keep copies, which is a good idea), so if you send a message from work, you will see that message when you access your mail from home or from a laptop while on the road. When you use an IMAP account you are, in fact, viewing your e-mail that is stored on the ISP's computer. There are no copies of the messages stored on your local computer unless you make a special effort to copy them there. You can use Rules in Entourage to copy your messages to your computer for additional backup.
With IMAP your messages are kept on the ISP's computer indefinitely, some Internet providers do not support IMAP. It uses their disk storage space for your messages. Most ISP's set an upper limit on the amount of mail storage you can use, and the size may be too small for you if you get a lot of mail. For instance, five megabytes (5 MB) of storage may seem like a lot, but it can quickly fill up if you receive scores of messages every day, some with large attached files such as photos, which can often take a quarter megabyte for a single photo. A couple of rolls of family snapshots could fill your available storage. If that happens, messages addressed to you will be returned to the sender. Therefore, I recommend that you have at least 10 MB, and possibly more, for e-mail storage, if you plan to use IMAP, and that you closely monitor the space being used. If you cannot get adequate storage for IMAP, use a POP account and download your mail. Your choice of an Internet Provider may be determined in part by how much mail storage they allow you to have.
For a list of IMAP providers see this link. Two popular IMAP service providers are Gmail and FastMail. Both offer free and paid accounts.
- Gmail is a free POP3 and IMAP webmail service provided by Google
- Gmal IMAP accounts are free and have a generous storage allowance. The service currently offers over 7250 MB of free storage with additional storage ranging from 10 GB ($20)to 400 GB.
- Their spam filter is also excellent.
- Retrieve email from other accounts
- Fastmail offers both POP3 and IMAP accounts.
- View Fastmail service plans starting at $4.95 per 1 year.
- Well reviewed by users. Specialist email provider since 2000
- Retrieve email from other accounts, including Hotmail
- All email, files and services replicated between multiple machines and backed up nightly.
- See links below for syncing mail to Blackberry and iPhone.
Multiple users: With IMAP, your mail remains on the server. Therefore, wherever you are and whatever computer you use or which users acted on a message, you always are looking at the same set of messages. Mail you or another users read will show up marked as read when you view it. Replies that are sent will be there to view regardless of which users sent them.
Backup your IMAP account
You can't depend on your mail being safe just because it's on a server. Be sure you have a backup strategy. There have been cases were Google temporarily disables your account and everything can be lost. Asking for you account to be restored can take days. I'm not familiar with Gmail's service for paid accounts, but for any free account, you get what you pay for. If you use Gmail for your business account, do so with caution.
Recommended Reading
Using IMAP on Mac OS X is an old (05/21/2002) article that's worth reading for additional info on organizing messages and organizing mailboxes.
Connect Entourage 2004 to Gmail's IMAP service
Create Gmail labels and make Entourage folders
Creating a Backup for Your Google Account
Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account
How to Manage Gmail on Your Blackberry Using the Gmail Application
