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Walkthrough · Intermediate · 1–2 hours, or one support ticket

How to Migrate Email to a New Host

How to relocate mailboxes to a new host with full history preserved and zero losses, without the guessing — the steps in order, the snag ahead of time, and the tip our support team repeats daily.

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The short answer

One line covers it: relocate mailboxes to a new host with full history preserved and zero losses — a intermediate-level job of roughly 1–2 hours, or one support ticket.

Below are the precise steps, the classic stumble, and one tip from the support desk. Wherever the platform already does a step for you, the guide says so rather than handing you a machine's chores.

By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026

Intermediate

Skill rating

Quick

Time budget

5

Steps in total

24/7

Support on call

No technical background needed. This walkthrough was written for first-timers, proven on our own hardware, and honest about which parts are genuinely tricky rather than merely unfamiliar.

A promise before step one: nothing here is a one-way door. Any step with teeth is flagged, and the way back is printed beside it.

The outline first, then the detail

Over the whole job, you will create the destination mailboxes, sync the history over imap, overlap the handover, run the sync again once dns settles and repoint the mail clients.

Every stage is a few minutes of unhurried clicking — the total depends mostly on how well you already know the control panel. The detailed instructions are further down; read the whole path once before you begin.

The error nearly everyone hits

Moving MX records before the destination mailboxes exist. Mail arrives at a server with no matching account and bounces on the spot. With email migration, getting the order right is very nearly the whole job.

Forewarned is genuinely forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the topic ever causes — and it disappears entirely once somebody points it out.

A habit worth borrowing

Screenshot each account's folder counts before you start. Thirty seconds of inventory turns 'I think it all arrived' into a checklist you can verify folder by folder.

A minute spent now repays itself every time this job comes round again — and like almost every hosting job, come round it will.

The steps already done before you arrive

Some steps in this guide exist only because hosting traditionally forced them on you. Here the SSL issues itself, the copy is taken daily without being asked, and one-click installers remove the manual setup. What is left is the part that was always genuinely yours.

Should a step still misfire, support answers at any hour with an actual fix rather than a knowledge-base link and a shrug. Half the guides on this site began as repeat patterns in our ticket queue.

A site packed up and carried to its new host without the visitors noticing

A quick platform makes for a short guide

Every walkthrough in this library is run on the platform we actually operate — cPanel, LiteSpeed, NVMe, one-click installs — so the instructions match your screen rather than gesturing at it from a distance.

A copy is taken daily on every plan, and putting a file or a database back is one click in the panel rather than a support ticket.

  • Every step checked exactly as published
  • The snag named before it arrives
  • The dull steps taken out of your way
  • People reachable at any hour you stall

Why Hosting & Domains

Standard on every plan

Jargon never charges you

Every term is defined on the spot or linked to the jargon buster — nothing assumes prior knowledge.

Help that keeps your hours, not ours

Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-walkthrough included.

Taken from real tickets

These guides came out of the support queue, so every snag flagged is one people genuinely hit.

Works exactly as printed

Every step is proven on the platform we run — none of the 'your host may vary' hedging.

The snag, flagged up front

The classic error for this particular task is named before step one, which is how 1–2 hours, or one support ticket stays 1–2 hours, or one support ticket.

The dull parts automated

SSL, backups and installs look after themselves here, leaving the guide to cover only what is genuinely yours.

Quick Start

Order placed to site online

  1. 1

    Create the destination mailboxes

    Recreate the same addresses at the new host, empty and waiting. The destinations have to exist before a single message moves or a single DNS record changes.

  2. 2

    Sync the history over IMAP

    An IMAP-to-IMAP sync tool, or our migration team at no charge, mirrors folders, flags and structure from the old server to the new. Nothing else carries the whole lot across.

  3. 3

    Overlap the handover

    Move the MX records over with the old server still in service. Mail in flight retries and lands correctly, and anything that reaches the old box can be collected afterwards.

  4. 4

    Run the sync again once DNS settles

    A second IMAP pass after propagation finishes gathers whatever landed on the old server in the meantime. That sweep is what makes 'nothing lost' literally true.

  5. 5

    Repoint the mail clients

    Update the server names on each device, or stay with the mail.yourdomain pattern and nothing needs touching at all. Passwords may change; the history is already there.

Built In

Fitted to every plan

  • No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
  • DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
  • PHP versions set per site from the control panel
  • Softaculous included for one-click application installs
  • WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
  • A renewal figure identical to the one you registered at
  • Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
  • cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
  • WordPress and 400+ further applications installed in one click
  • Your existing site brought across by our engineers, at no charge

Frequently Asked

The questions that come up most

Will messages go missing while DNS changes?

Not with an overlap in place. Sending servers retry for hours or days, so whichever end answers takes the message, and the follow-up sync sweeps in whatever landed on the old side. Losing mail takes shutting the old server down early, so do not.

Can your team do the mailbox migration for us?

We can, free with hosting, covering the IMAP history sync and the right DNS sequencing. Mail migration is exactly the job where experience prevents the silent losses, so hand it over and spend the afternoon on something better.

How quickly can a site be live?

Quickly — minutes rather than days. The account opens the moment payment clears, the domain (free for the first year on annual plans) attaches straight away, and the one-click installer has WordPress or any of 240+ applications running before your coffee cools. Site already somewhere else? Send the details and we move it free, normally within a day.

What is the uptime commitment, and what happens in a month that misses it?

99.9% — and if a month falls below that through a fault on our side, our terms entitle you to a pro-rated credit; ask and we apply it. Calling it a target rather than a contractual SLA is a deliberate choice. Hardware and network faults surface through platform monitoring, usually before the first customer notices.

Keep reading

Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.

A plain order of work for a move nobody visiting will notice: which files go over first, how to carry the mail across without losing a message, when exactly to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every outage we are asked to rescue.

What arrives is the checklist, and then the occasional note on keeping a site quick. Leave whenever you like; the privacy policy covers the rest.

Start on a plan priced without games.

NVMe hosting with SSL and the migration included, people answering at any hour, and a price that stays where it was.

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