E-mail !

Electronic mail, also known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the same time, in common with instant messaging. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-forward model. Email servers accept, forward, deliver and store messages. Neither the users nor their computers are required to be online simultaneously; they need connect only briefly, typically to an email server, for as long as it takes to send or receive messages.

POP3 and IMAP

POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) is a protocol used to retrieve electronic mail (email) from the email server. POP3 protocol was created because of the design of the electronic mail system that requires the server to accommodate email for a while until it’s taken by an eligible recipient.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a standard protocol for accessing / retrieving e-mail from the server. IMAP allows users to choose e-mail message that he will take, make a folder on the server, search for specific e-mail messages, even deleted e-mail messages on server. This ability is much better than POP (Post Office Protocol) which only allows to retrieve/ download all the messages without exception.