If Mutt was compiled with POP3 support (by running the configure script with the --enable-pop flag), it has the ability to work with mailboxes located on a remote POP3 server and fetch mail for local browsing.
You can access the remote POP3 mailbox by selecting the folder
pop://popserver/.
You can select an alternative port by specifying it with the server, ie:
pop://popserver:port/.
You can also specify different username for each folder, ie:
pop://username@popserver[:port]/.
Polling for new mail is more expensive over POP3 than locally. For this reason the frequency at which Mutt will check for mail remotely can be controlled by the $pop_checkinterval variable, which defaults to every 60 seconds.
If Mutt was compiled with SSL support (by running the configure
script with the --with-ssl flag), connections to POP3 servers
can be encrypted. This naturally requires that the server supports
SSL encrypted connections. To access a folder with POP3/SSL, you should
use pops: prefix, ie:
pops://[username@]popserver[:port]/.
Another way to access your POP3 mail is the fetch-mail function (default: G). It allows to connect to pop_host, fetch all your new mail and place it in the local spoolfile. After this point, Mutt runs exactly as if the mail had always been local.
Note: If you only need to fetch all messages to local mailbox you should consider using a specialized program, such as fetchmail