How to Access an AOL Email Account With POP3 or IMAP

Want to read your AOL email with something other than AOL?

A woman is using her phone and numerous email icons are floating out from it.

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by Heinz Tschabitscher
A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
Updated March 15, 2019

AOL prefers you access your AOL email in AOL but understands that many users have more than one email account, and it is convenient for those users to access their email from all their providers in one location. As it turns out, you can access your AOL email in many email service providers including Outlook, Windows Mail, Gmail, and many of the Mail apps on your mobile devices. Thanks to the wonders of internet messaging access protocol (IMAP), you can.

If you set up your AOL email account in any email client capable of IMAP, you can receive and send messages easily. Even the AOL folders — Spam, Saved, Sent Items, and Trash appear there automatically. Of course, you can also use POP to fetch incoming mail in an uncomplicated fashion.

Choose Your Email Program

The steps you need to take to set up your AOL email account differ from program to program. Here's how to do it in:

If your program is not on the list above, enter the generic POP or IMAP AOL mail settings into the program you want to use to access your AOL email.

Settings to Access AOL With Any IMAP Email Program

To access an AOL email account using IMAP, first confirm that your email client supports IMAP. If it does, create a new account and enter the following information in the relevant fields to configure the email client to access AOL email.

  • AOL Mail IMAP server: imap.aol.com
  • AOL Mail IMAP login: your AOL screen name
  • AOL Mail IMAP password: your AOL screen name password
  • AOL Mail IMAP port: 993
  • AOL Mail IMAP SSL required: yes

To set up outgoing mail through AOL servers, enter the following information in addition to your login screen name and AOL password:

  • AOL Mail SMTP server address: smtp.aol.com
  • AOL Mail Port using SSL/TLS: 587
  • AOL Mail TLS/SSL required: Yes

Settings to Access AOL With Any POP3 Email Program

If your email client doesn't support IMAP, you can enter a POP3 account with the following settings to read your email in a non-AOL account:

  • AOL Mail POP server: pop.aol.com
  • AOL Mail POP login: your AOL screen name
  • AOL Mail POP password: your AOL screen name password
  • AOL Mail POP port: 995
  • AOL Mail SSL required: yes

Set up outgoing AOL mail, too, by entering the same screen name, password, and server along with these settings:

  • AOL Mail outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.aol.com
  • AOL Mail Port using SSL/TLS: 587