If reading and parsing email from via Pop is a critical part of my application, would it make sense to go with a commercial email component, or is JavaMail all I need really?
My usage: I want to connect to pop3, ssl support, and also imap support.
I intend of displaying the email in a web browser also i.e. a web email client.
JavaMail is open source. You can use that as a basis of an in-house project if you need to buff it up some.
If you want to use something commercial, be sure you have the source if you need to tweak it to local needs.
Commons Email only provides functionality for sending email, not parsing it.
JavaMail should be fine for what you're trying to do, but it can be a bit yucky in places and incredibly strict in terms of RFC compliance. You'll find that email clients don't necessarily adhere to the specification fully either so the problem will be in handling the edge cases and oddities in terms of incoming emails.
It does provide POP and IMAP support over SSL, check the API for more details:
Depending on your budget, you may want to look at IP*Works! and IP*Works! SSL: http://www.nsoftware.com/portal/java/
They are definitely pricey, but so much nicer to work with compared to JavaMail and if you get stuck, they actually have pretty decent support.