The IMAP abbreviation stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and is one of the two most popular protocols for receiving email messages from the Internet (the other one is POP3). The main benefit of the IMAP protocol is that you can receive your email on more than one computer because once the message is received it remains on the email server.

As an additional feature IMAP supports the usage of flags to define the state of the message - whether it has been read, replied to or deleted. Although these flags are stored on the server, note that different email clients handle them differently.