IMAP is a smarter e-mail access protocol than POP. It allows the manipulation of mail items on the server: for example providing mail sorting into folders. This is in contrast to POP where mail must be downloaded to a client before it can be sorted. This means that mail can be accessed from any client, which makes IMAP more useful for people who use more that one host to connect to their mailbox. It also means that mail is likely to stay on the server (where it takes up disk space). Because it provides more features, IMAP is a more complex protocol than POP, but it is implemented in most modern mail user agents.

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