What is IMAP?

Internet Message Access Protocol. A protocol allowing a client to access and manipulate electronic mail messages on a server. It permits manipulation of remote message folders (mailboxes), in a way that is functionally equivalent to local mailboxes. IMAP includes operations for creating, deleting, and renaming mailboxes; checking for new messages; permanently removing messages; searching; and selective fetching of message attributes, texts, and portions thereof. It does not specify a means of posting mail; this function is handled by a mail transfer protocol such as SMTP.

IMAP is useful when multiple clients are access the same mailbox or a client wants to check the mail inbox from several different locations.