I’m curious on this, and spent some time searching for cases where IMAP clients corrupted the data on the server, and came up blank. Do you have any sources on this? I’ve been using IMAP for decades and never heard of such.
There are plenty of backup solutions that are able to backup your local IMAP data. Even some that work with M$ Outlook’s data files (both types).
Hasn’t the described sync-back problem been mitigated with IMAP4? I am only aware of these problem with IMAP2.
Similar problems can also affect you with POP. Some 15 years back Outlook had a bug in which it would mark forwarded mails as fetched. Thus, the server would have deleted these once you forwarded an email.
The basic use case is that many people like to read and then delete their emails on their mobile device, but leave the original on the server for other handling and/or archiving later. But - as with the year-long requests for the return of the unified multiple-account inbox - the lead developer has made it clear the only use cases he cares about are his own. I am so disappointed to see that the acquisition of this software by Mozilla has not led to more mature, professional product management and leadership.
Hmmm … do people really keep their emails ONLY online??? That, to ME, is the worst possible solution 
My phones aren’t my main device, nor are they my storage devices. I read mails on the phone (IMAP) if I’m not at home, but then collect them with Thunderbird on my PC,also via IMAP. There they get sorted into storage folders, away from the folders that are synced online. Thunderbird’s local storage folders, together with a bunch of other important stuff like My Documents or the Roaming folder, automatically get backed up to another harddrive every night. So unless BOTH drives should fail at once I’m fairly protected from any data loss.
But I most definitely wouldn’t keep any important emails online only - what happens if I’m somewhere without an internet connection, the Google/Yahoo/whatever servers have issues or some hacker script kiddy decides to see if he can get into their servers?
Maybe I’m too old + oldfashioned, but what’s mine is better kept at my house 
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No one is trying to persuade anyone else how to handle their email. The issue is that cketti wants to remove POP support from this app, and lots of users don’t want that, for whatever their own reasons are.
That’s not specific to the POP3 protocol. You can do the same with IMAP.
I’m not trying to tell anybody what to do either … I’m just genuinely surprised to hear people keep their stuff only online and not backed up in the safety of their home. To ME that seems odd so I voiced my opinion … that’s all my comment was, MY opinion 
My reasons are pretty much the same as Nimueh’s. I prefer to keep my emails on my main computer, and use the mobile device for getting new mails when I’m on the go. Besides, my provider supports POP3, not IMAP, so it’s not like I have an option, even if I wanted one 
Which provider is that?
Sorry, I can’t divulge that. It’s a rather small hosting provider, not widely known. I know it sounds strange that they don’t support IMAP in this day and age, but here we are.
This may be the case, but with POP3 I do control what changes (to my draft emails, etc.) go back to the server and what stays local forever. Example: if under POP3 I wrote a long, emotional response to sb, but before sending it I decided to delete the middle paragraph (with all the angry stuff) and just send the last friendly lines … then the middle paragraph would never end up anywhere else. Now compare this to a Yahoo account using IMAP. While I write that ugly middle paragraph, copies of the draft may be uploaded (not sure I can control this), and while the received may never see the middle paragraph, the Yahoo servers do. And as such a server does never “forget anything”, it will linger on.
This may be an odd example. Just trying to highlight the main difference between IMAP and POP3 , with IMAP mails are managed on the server, with POP locally.
Any corrections welcome !!
Of course you can disable saving drafts. That’s not a property of the protocol. It’s something your email client does.
You are probably right, but the fact remains (or not ? ) that IMAP handles all messages on the server. So if I turn drafts off, then they are off locally too … and I have no drafts at all when I need them. I am not fighting for POP, I am trying to give you an impression why people may stick to POP.
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I use K-9 mail as a secondary client when I am not home where I use Outlook for email.
I use pop3 since day one of the internet, so it’s a habit.
But, I also have my own domain with 1 Gb storage space only, including the files for my website, so the email messages from the past 20 years just could not fit on the web-email server, so this is the main reason for using pop3.
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I use POP to store my e-mails locally.
After all if the advantage of IMAP is syncing with the server, why use a 3rd party email client? using an official email client like Gmail is better right?
That’s not a good idea, at least not when you use K-9 (might be okay with other clients). K-9 has no way to export local messages. If you change your phone, you cannot migrate those local messages. Also, phones get lost or stolen, so make sure to do regular backups.
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This excuse no longer applies to me at this point. All devices can be stolen, but from my experience, I have lost my laptop twice, I think data leaks are easier on computers than on smartphones because the drives in computers are not encrypted by default.
The security of mobile phones nowadays is even higher than of laptops or PCs. On smartphone the device is all encrypted and cannot even be separated, and if it is lost it can even be locked and deleted data remotely. Computers can be like that?
And different from a computer whose components can be separated even the drive is not encrypted by default, so when stolen the drive is removed and the data can be read easily.
In your opinion, computer is safer because it may not always be carried like smartphone, but when computer is lost, you can’t even do anything like a smartphone. Because computers even laptops don’t have a connection to trace.
I was not talking about security. My point was that local-only messages are only a good idea when there is a way to make backups. K-9 does not have a way to make backups of the local messages.
POP3 or an email service that allows keeping permanent copies of all sent and received emails on your local storage is the only best solution for privacy and security oriented people!
I personally don’t want to leave my emails on any server longer than needed, i.e. until download to my own local storage.
With plenty of flash memory space available in todays modern mobiles and PCs its quite easy to have a copy of your emails over the last several years on your PC and phone. Usually I keep all emails on my PC and delete everything older than 3 years on my phone to save memory. Emails are downloaded via POP3 by phone and PC and afterwards they’ll get deleted automatically on the server. So the server just has some emails of the last 24h. I feel much more comfortable with that procedure and have also identical copies (with e.g. auto bcc to my own address for sent emails) on both machines.
I don"t understand how someone can store emails via IMAP for several years on an email server of a company he hardly knows with a server probably located in anorher country…Server side encryption isn’t very secure either, since you have to still trust the company incl. all its employees and other (5, 7, 12?) eyes that might be also interested in your mails. The only safe way to send emails anyway is to end-to-end encrypt/decrypt them with a strong algorythm and passphraae (by sender/receiver). With POP3 one can reduce the risk of emails getting in the wrong hands significantly and on top of that has full control over his emails, even offline.
What I also can’t understand is, that there is no Android email client that can import (html, eml etc.) emails from Thunderbird! Not even K9 is able to accomplish that!! I think nowadays, as email services are one of the most important communication means, and people collecting email letters (business and private) just as regular mail letters in the past over years and decades, it should be a standard feature in at least Thunderbird-like (FLOSS) email clients to easily copy and transfer emails and folders with emails from one device to another.
Instead, even the FLOSS developers are narrowing down options and freedoms for users (thinking about disabling POP3 etc.)…
Maybe the best is to leave that G00LAG torture completely and move to a full, native Linux phone and get full control back over your own machines 
I hope more and more people will realize this…
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If you run your own IMAP archive, you can have both privacy and better performance with multiple client devices. ¯\(ツ)/¯