IMAP, POP3, for Outlook 2003?

[TallTravel]

I am setting up a new business with potentially huge numbers of incoming e mails. I am using www.bluehost.com to host the web site. I have to choose both an application and a set of protocols.

Bluehost.com offers:

Supported Incoming Mail Protocols: POP3, POP3S (SSL/TLS), IMAP, IMAPS (SSL/TLS)
Supported Outgoing Mail Protocols: SMTP, SMTPS (SSL/TLS)

I will use both Opera and IE 7.0 as my browsers, and I must choose a very reliable e mail application and a protocol. Since the primary web based application software package supports Outlook, my tendency is to choose Outlook and either IMAP or POP3.

Any solid e mail clients I should consider other than Outlook? I have 2003, will surely upgrade to Office 2007 and outlook 2007.

Any help on the choice between IMAP and POP3? The only information I have about the difference is that IMAP stores all the e mails on the server even after I download to Outlook.

[glc]

Standard POP3 should be fine along with either Outlook 2003 or 2007 if you are using a single machine to work with the mail. IMAP is useful if you access your mail from multiple machines or on the road with a laptop, but you need to be aware of your host's mailbox size limitations.

If you use POP3 and Outlook, I'd make sure you archive your mail periodically in order to keep your working .pst file from growing to an unmanageable size.

[TallTravel]

Originally Posted by glc Standard POP3 should be fine along with either Outlook 2003 or 2007 if you are using a single machine to work with the mail. IMAP is useful if you access your mail from multiple machines or on the road with a laptop, but you need to be aware of your host's mailbox size limitations. If you use POP3 and Outlook, I'd make sure you archive your mail periodically in order to keep your working .pst file from growing to an unmanageable size.

Thanks. I have a latop and a PDA with WiFi, and I may end up getting a Smartphone, so I think I may be better off with IMAP. The primary workstation will be yet another machine, a desktop, so I may end up with as many as four machines which might be accessing the same e mails. If IMAP keeps all of the e mails on the server then it sounds like IMAP is best for me.