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What You'll Learn
Emails don’t just “fly through the air” when you press send. They rely on a set of rules called protocols that decide how a message is delivered and received. In this lesson, we’ll explore SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 in simple terms so you can clearly picture the journey of an email.
📖 How Email Works (SMTP, IMAP, POP3 Explained Simply)
Lesson 2
2 min read
Interactive
The Journey of an Email
Think of email as a letter. You write it, drop it into a mailbox, a postman carries it to the destination city, and finally, the recipient picks it up. The same happens digitally — only with servers and protocols instead of paper and trucks.
SMTP: The Sender’s Helper
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.
It’s the system that takes your email from your computer and delivers it to the recipient’s mail server. Imagine SMTP as the postman who carries your letter from your house to the local post office.
POP3: The Old Mailbox Pickup
POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol (version 3).
It lets you download emails from the server to your device. Once downloaded, the message is usually removed from the server. Think of it like emptying your mailbox completely — the letters are now with you, but the box is empty. This made sense in the early days of email, but it’s less useful now since people use multiple devices.
IMAP: The Modern Standard
IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol.
Unlike POP3, IMAP lets you view and manage emails directly on the server. It keeps everything in sync across all your devices. Imagine walking to your mailbox, reading letters, but leaving them inside so that anyone else in your household can read them too. That’s why IMAP is the most common protocol used today.
Putting It All Together
- SMTP handles outgoing mail (sending).
- POP3 and IMAP handle incoming mail (receiving).
- Modern email services rely almost entirely on SMTP + IMAP.
Key Takeaway:
Every time you send or read an email, you’re actually using these invisible “rules of delivery.” SMTP sends messages out, IMAP keeps them synced, and POP3 is the older way of pulling them down.
🥋 Sensei Tip
Think of SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 as different roles in a dojo:
- SMTP is the messenger student who carries your message to another dojo.
- POP3 is the student who takes the scroll home and doesn’t return it.
- IMAP is the shared scroll room where all students can read the same scroll whenever they want.
Once you frame it like this, you’ll never forget how these protocols work.
⏱️ Est. reading time: 2 minutes
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