Categories October Surprise 2024 How to read email using python and smtplib – Stack Overflow Post author By Post date September 22, 2025 The SMTP protocol is for sending mails. If you want to look at your inbox – aka receive mails – you need to use POP3 or IMAP. But just like smtplib, Python also has imaplib for IMAP and poplib for POP3.