What is IMAP?

imap.org is a vendor-neutral reference site for the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) and the modern email stack.

IMAP is the dialtone under most email clients and services — IMAP provides mailbox access to various clients

IMAP is the messaging system that underlies practically every popular email client and brand in use today.

Large, monolithic systems like Gmail or Microsoft Outlook run on IMAP, as do email clients like Thunderbird, Apple Mail, your smartphone’s email app, even webmail systems - they’re all user interfaces for IMAP.