POP3 or IMAP? Which is Best for Your Gmail Outlook Connection?

It's great that Google offers two different ways to connect Outlook to Gmail. On this site I've provided detailed instructions on how to set up Gmail and Outlook for either way. All you have to do is decide which way you want to make the connection. By the time you finish reading this page, you will have made that decision.

A Quick Review of POP3 and IMAP

Here's a really quick review of what POP3 and IMAP do from our perspective as Outlook users.

POP3

POP3 lets you send and receive Gmail messages with Outlook. Outlook copies messages from your Gmail account into your Outlook Inbox. You can set it up to delete the messages from the Gmail mailbox when Outlook copies them, or to leave a copy in the Gmail mailbox.

When you work with a message in one place, the changes you make don't show up in the other place. For example, if you delete one of these messages in Outlook, it doesn't affect what you see in Gmail. Or if you move a message from one folder to another in Gmail, nothing happens to it in Outlook.

All POP3 does is let you copy messages from your Gmail account (deleting them if you wish) into Outlook, and send messages as if they were being sent directly from your Gmail account.

IMAP

IMAP lets you send and receive Gmail messages with Outlook. Instead of copying messages from Gmail into the Outlook Inbox, with IMAP, Outlook creates a set of folders that duplicates those in your Gmail account.

Outlook and Gmail continually synchronize those messages and folders. Create a folder in Gmail, and it appears in Outlook. Delete a message in Outlook and it gets deleted in Gmail. In effect, what you get is an exact replica of your Gmail folders and messages within Outlook.

If you make changes to the Gmail folders in Outlook while your computer is not connected to the Internet, the changes get synchronized the next time Outlook is running and has an Internet connection.

How Do I Choose?

The big question is: how do I choose between POP3 and IMAP?

The answer depends on what you want to do. The big advantage of using POP3 is that messages end up in your Outlook Inbox like any other messages. Once you have everything set up, you can treat your Gmail messages the same as all your other messages.

If you are a mobile user, or if you have more than one place where you want access to your Gmail account, IMAP has big advantages. Because IMAP synchronizes folders and messages with Outlook, you can work with your messages either using Outlook, or directly in your Gmail account using any web browser.

Even better, if you have multiple computers using Outlook, you can connect each one of them to the Gmail account using IMAP. This lets you resolve the old problem of being able to work with your mail on any of your computers.

There's also the added bonus that an up-to-date copy of your Gmail messages is still available on Google's servers if something bad happens to your computer.

On the other hand, with IMAP, your Gmail messages go into their own set of Outlook folders, rather than into the Inbox with everything else. So you have two sets of mail folders to attend to in Outlook.

So What's the Verdict?

Of course, the final decision is yours, but here's what I recommend:

If you are just looking for another email address to use with the minimum fuss and bother, use POP3.

If you are a mobile user, or want to have access to your email on multiple computers, or like the idea of having an up-to-date copy of your messages and folders safe on the Google servers, use IMAP.

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