3 ms·

People question why the heck anyone would bother with pop3 in 2023. At Mailsac we find people still use pop3 for testing delivery. It is unsophisticated. Most p

People question why the heck anyone would bother with pop3 in 2023. At Mailsac we find people still use pop3 for testing delivery. It is unsophisticated. Most people use our json to fetch the mail, but sometimes they’ve already got an smtp library open and use the pop feature. The pop protocol is so simple it’s a fun toy to write, as well. You can do pop against most mail providers. It’s not very secure of course. But has value as a learning tool, too. Knowing how to write text parsers is a useful CS skill.

pmontra 4y ago
I download a copy of my mail on my Android phone over POP3 and possibly delete uninteresting messages, for real, on the server. I'm using K9. Then I'll eventually download the remaining messages on my laptop and remove them from the server. A number of Thunderbird filters move messages to their folders and I backup them daily off site. If I stay weeks on vacation, I check my current mail on my phone and that's it. If it's vacation I don't care about old messages. Customers have a copy of them anyway. I've been running like that for at least 12 years, no need for IMAP. Well, maybe if I could access my Thunderbird directory over IMAP, but it's not really important. Running my own IMAP server would be such a small improvement that anything else gets past it in the queue.
_a_a_a_ 4y ago
I was forced off POP because my email provider stopped supporting it. I never saw anything wrong with it. Goodby ancient, reliable email client, hello thunderbird. And with it, wierdnesses and bugs, and buttock-clenching moments when it tells you it's going to upgrade itself like it or not, and you hope afterwards it hasn't lost anything or changed the UI.
billpg 4y ago
POP3 is still popular for server-to-server bulk transport. I wrote the service to act as a simple listener where anyone can attach their own handlers to provide access to messages. My thinking it would act as a front-end proxy so someone could allow POP3 access to a mailbox by calling through to the REST etc services.

pmontra 4y ago

I download a copy of my mail on my Android phone over POP3 and possibly delete uninteresting messages, for real, on the server. I'm using K9. Then I'll eventually download the remaining messages on my laptop and remove them from the server. A number of Thunderbird filters move messages to their folders and I backup them daily off site. If I stay weeks on vacation, I check my current mail on my phone and that's it. If it's vacation I don't care about old messages. Customers have a copy of them anyway. I've been running like that for at least 12 years, no need for IMAP. Well, maybe if I could access my Thunderbird directory over IMAP, but it's not really important. Running my own IMAP server would be such a small improvement that anything else gets past it in the queue.

_a_a_a_ 4y ago

I was forced off POP because my email provider stopped supporting it. I never saw anything wrong with it. Goodby ancient, reliable email client, hello thunderbird. And with it, wierdnesses and bugs, and buttock-clenching moments when it tells you it's going to upgrade itself like it or not, and you hope afterwards it hasn't lost anything or changed the UI.

billpg 4y ago

POP3 is still popular for server-to-server bulk transport. I wrote the service to act as a simple listener where anyone can attach their own handlers to provide access to messages. My thinking it would act as a front-end proxy so someone could allow POP3 access to a mailbox by calling through to the REST etc services.