Pop3 or webmail?
 

I am curious as to whether the ubiquity of webmail these days has moved folks who used to use Pop3 clients to webmail.

I have used a pop3 client (Pegasus Mail) since 1997 and have 13 years' worth of email stored in it. (I also nowadays have all mail that comes to my pop3 inbox on my isp forwarded to my gmail account, and I use Google's smtp server so I have a backup online of all sent and received email. I also backup my computer two other different ways -- a daily backup via Mozy Online and a more or less monthly backup to my home NAS via Acronis)

Just curious: For either personal or business stuff, did you use to use pop3 and now use webmail, or vice versa, or ???

I never use webmail/IMAP. Simply put, I don't trust it. There are too many anecdotes of searches without a warrant, snooping by webmail provider employees, webmail providers changing their terms/discontinuing their service offering.

I want my e-mails in my e-mail client and ONLY in my e-mail client. My client uses TLS encryption to connect to the server for both sending and receiving, and that's pretty much that.

+1 more or less

doing both - my company uses google apps as our e-mail host ($50/year/user with 25GB for each user, with your own domain) and Outlook as a client. You can go either pop3 or imap with the setup (we leave that up to each person). For me, I use IMAP and then set it up to keep all my e-mail on Outlook, too. Each environment has it's advantages. Outlook is great when traveling, on plane. Also, good for drag and drop,etc. Gmail is fantastic for searches.

I use Gmail and keep everything in the cloud. I got tired of using a different computer to check mail and not having something I was looking for because it was in an Outlook .pst file on my computer at home.

As far as the security concerns raised above go, I guess I'm just not important enough to think people would want to snoop through my mail. If there were anything I really wanted kept super-private, I would either communicate it in person or use PGP.

I use a lot of different things.

1) I currently work for myself as well as a company I founded a decade or so ago. The company has an Exchange Server, and I use Outlook connecting with RPC over HTTP (this allows me to connect the same in and out of the office).
2) I have a standard POP3 account with the website of my self-employed business.
3) Also, about 6 years ago I setup an Exchange Server at home, as part of training myself for certain jobs. I've enjoyed being able to give accounts to wife, kids, a friend or two. Also, I access lots of documents on this server when on the road.
4) I have a Yahoo account I use for lots of web interaction.
5) I have a Google account I don't use much for mail, but it's been useful as an intermediate with my Droid (synchronizing Outlook contacts, calendars).

As far as webmail vs. client, I access Yahoo & Google via web, the other 3 using Outlook. The only time I do webmail for the other accounts is when I'm on someone else's computer.

POP3 for me. I've got things set up so that mail gets downloaded onto the desktop and onto the laptop, so I never have the problem of mail being in the wrong place.

Back in the old days, when using one's laptop on the road wasn't as easy as it is now, I used to forward mail to a Hotmail account when I was travelling... then I discovered mailreader.com and started using that in conjunction with my POP3 account... but now that I can more or less hook up my laptop to the Internet everywhere I go I just use Thunderbird for everything. I don't like webmail.

There now seems to be a new generation of Internet users who don't even seem to know what a mail client is, and who can't figure out how I manage to read and compose replies to emails when I'm half-way across the Atlantic...

Your POP e-mails still go through an ISP and that ISP can retain them just like a webmail server. There really isn't much difference. Employees can snoop through old backups just like webmail. Those e-mails also hit many other servers along their path to your POP client.

My POP mail goes to a secure server which my company controls, so that's definitely much more secure than webmail.

I agree that there is potential for snooping on the way to our secure server, but that's not all in one place.

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I use exchange with an imap client for work mail. That way I can use it offline on the client but it is all backed upon the server. Also, that way I can get at it on only of my computers that I have a client on or for that matter anything that has a browser. POP doesn't give me the flexibility. I gave it up years ago. Having the same thing on my computer I gave with me and the server works best for me.

I only use exchange / outlook for work. Everything else is cloud based. Have never lost email in the last 15 years.

With Android / mobile devices, it is more convenient to have my email in the cloud, that I can easily view anywhere.

Only because your company owns the server. If they owned it and dropped POP3 in favor of web-based access it wouldn't really change too much other than you saying that you're getting the same benefit because the server is secure.

Unless you're using POP3 with SSL you're actually likely more exposed as pretty much every webmail implementation is SSL-encrypted. POP3 generally isn't and that means all your traffic is in open-text between your computer and the server - just like the majority of SMTP flow on the internet. Yours may be configured that way but it is certainly in a very small minority as such.

POP3 has a number of limitations that IMAP addressed for a client-server based email configuration. Webmail clients address some of these issues but not all of them. For me a combination of online and offline access is usually important so I like the ability to have a mix of the two.

I'm another POP3 user. Too many times I want to work on my inbox when I'm not connected to the Net, like on an airplane, or the connection is sporadic. I have one throwaway web e-mail address I use for Web sites and don't download to my computer, but I only check it sporadically.

Total hybrid here.

My provider offers an exchange account that offers you every mode of access (except blackberry).

On my personal computers I use Exchange, when I had a blackberry at the last job I POP'd into it, and when I'm using the work machine now I can't add accounts to I access it via webmail.

I find the huge advantage to POP is you have it locally for when you are not online, and it's much faster usually.

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IMAP does that as well and let's you work from the server using multiple clients or the web as well.