Email Comparison: Office 365 vs POP/IMAP
It appears that Office 365 offers a set of robust web applications, but can they replace POP/IMAP?
PCFIXIT Business IT Solutions – Office 365 vs POP/IMAP
The concept of ’email’ is a very old mechanism of communication, in that the first email was sent back in the ’70s and for a long time, the only method of communicating with an email server to retrieve emails was through the POP protocol. This began to change over the last 10 years as different email services have begun to gain more importance in our lives.
We will compare the ‘conventional’ email technologies POP and IMAP versus the newer and more powerful offering from Microsoft, Office 365,
POP/IMAP
Post Office Protocol (POP) gained popularity during the ’80s as email became a more readily accessible form of communication – users were able to send emails to a remote server where they could later be retrieved and downloaded for viewing.
The concept of POP is accurately described in the name – the server acts like a ‘post office’ to temporarily store your mail. When you access the server to retrieve the mail, it is then removed from the server and the only copy left is that on your local device (computer, phone, etc). This makes working from multiple devices extremely difficult because not all messages will be stored on one device, instead of being spread randomly across multiple devices according to when you use them.
Other disadvantages of POP:
• Extremely basic connection type, many POP servers only support non-encrypted connections
• Sent emails are not synced up to the server
• No mail contacts are synced.
IMAP (Internet Messaging Access Protocol) has grown to become almost the de facto standard in email communication due to its flexibility in application and relative simplicity of operation. IMAP operates very differently to POP in that it stores all your email information on a central server, and you as a user can log in and view what is stored there as you need to.
This allows for multiple devices and multiple users to connect to the same mailbox and all see the information that is stored there – greatly increasing the applicable use in a business’s daily operation.
These positives aside, there are still some drawbacks to the IMAP that you should be aware of:
• Depending on your connection speed, large mailboxes can be very unwieldy and difficult to manage.
• Usually quite slow – depending on the hosting provider
• A loss in the connection may lead to all viewable messages dropping offline unless cached locally
• Message storage may be limited
Office 365
When it comes to communicating and working online, there isn’t much of a better choice than this. Combining all the best parts of having standardised Microsoft software on your local computer and in the cloud, Office 365 takes advantage of one of the most powerful email technologies available – Exchange.
Microsoft Exchange is a proprietary enterprise-class email technology which allows for the highest performance email experience available for purchase in a retail environment. By maintaining a constant connection to the server, the Exchange client will ensure that all data (email, contacts and calendars) are synchronised with a centralised server (or the cloud in this case) immediately and without any delay. This behaviour can be replicated on many devices for almost instantaneous delivery of information across all devices within the network.
Most large enterprises have run Exchange servers ‘on-premise’ for a long time however with the introduction of Office 365, users without massive equipment or IT department budgets can also benefit from this powerful technology investment of only around $7AUD per user per month.
Robust Security And Reliability
A common misconception about the cloud is that it’s not safe. With Office 365, it’s Microsoft taking on all of the responsibility for security and reliability. Storing all of your data on the cloud with Office 365 eliminates the cost of purchasing expensive hardware for your server rooms, along with salaries for full-time staff operating the server rooms. The cloud is more environmentally friendly, and disaster recovery is in place by including backup systems in case data is corrupted – along with other benefits.
This frees up your IT team to utilise their valuable time elsewhere, such as helping the users get the most out of the enterprise software. Office 365 has a lot of built-in security features – depending on the plan that’s chosen – that will keep your company’s data safe, three of the biggest safety features include:
• Encrypted Email: Keeping anyone other than the intended recipient from reading your emails.
• Data Loss Prevention: Microsoft’s Data Loss Prevention policy allows you to identify, monitor and protect sensitive information from leaving your organisation.
• Mobile Device Management: A feature allowing your IT team to control Office on your employees’ mobile devices to protect company information. If somebody loses their device or it gets stolen, you’re able to delete all of the data without needing to use the lost or stolen device to delete data.
• Advanced Threat Analytics: This unique feature analyses systems to detect and alert users to suspicious behaviour on the network. It scans emails as they land into inboxes for malicious links and attachments and if there’s anything dangerous lurking in there, it prevents it from getting in. While the email will still appear, a message appears explaining why the attachment isn’t there. That’s one way to eliminate human error.
And these are just a few of the security benefits. There’s Exchange Online Protection, Threat Management and Multi-Factor Authentication plus many more to ensure Office 365 keeps your organisation secure around-the-clock:
• Exchange Online Protection: Provides advanced security and reliability against spam and malware to protect information and email access.
• Threat Management: Security monitoring to prevent or detect any tampering of data. Dedicated threat management teams are in place to anticipate and prevent malicious access.
• Multi-Factor Authentication: Multi-factor authentication protects access to sensitive data, such as using a phone to access data as a secondary device for added security.
Other advantages of the Office 365 platform include:
• Large 50GB mailbox per user, eliminating the need to delete any email
• 1TB file storage per user for easy sharing of files and documents.
• Familiar folder-based structure
• Multi-Factor Authentication – Industry Best Security
• Seamless integration into Microsoft Outlook
• Ability to easily upgrade to full retail copies of Outlook, Word, Excel and Powerpoint for use as long as the subscription is active, and up to 5 devices at a time for only $10 more per user per month. (*Office 365 Business Premium)
In conclusion, if email is a critical part of your daily business you should consider upgrading to Office 365.
Talk to the team at PCFIXIT Business IT Solutions about implementing Office 365 into your Business on 07 5522 1120