Transfer Email from Previous Host via Email Migrator
Table of Contents
The Email Migrator tool allows you to transfer messages from your previous server to your current one. The messages will be automatically copied onto our server using secure IMAP protocol.
Step 1: Access the email migrator
To start an email migration go to Site Tools > Email > Email Migrator. The tool will allow you to transfer email messages from your previous server to your current one.
Step 2: Provide the new email account details
Before starting the migration process, you need to recreate your existing email account in Site Tools. If you haven’t recreated it yet, you can do so by clicking the creation link above the drop down and using the box that will appear:
You can also create the new account by clicking the creation link above the drop down and using the box that will appear:
Note that by default the newly created email account will have its quota set to 512MB. Make sure to change the quota value to be higher than the email account’s quota usage on the remote server to ensure that all messages will be transferred over.
Step 3: Provide the old email account details
You will need to provide the mail password of the current active email account you want to migrate to SiteGround, as well as the Hostname or IP address of your old mail server. The hostname or IP of the old mail server is what you have set up in your mail client as incoming mail server setting when you configured it to work with the old server. If you are not sure about the exact details, contact the old mail service provider for more information or refer to their knowledgebase.
Step 4: Initiate the transfer and verify its success
You can now click the Start Migration button. If there is no issue with the data provided, the connection between the servers or the size of your email account, the transfer will start. You cannot initiate another mailbox transfer while you have one in progress, but you can use all other Site Tools functionalities.
Once the process has ended you can verify if all of your messages have been successfully transferred in the Migrations within the last 30 days table.
If only part of the email messages have been transferred, you will see an Incomplete status in the record of the migration and you should retry the transfer. The retry of an incomplete transfer will move over only the remaining untransferred messages.
Step 5: Update your Domain’s MX Record
Now that you have your messages copied on the new servers, update the domain’s MX records so that your new mail messages start coming to the new server. To do that you should set the correct MX records for your domain in the DNS zone for your domain name.
You can see which are the correct default MX record in Site Tools > Domain > DNS Zone Editor. Click on Create new record > MX, choose the Switch to system default MX records and the correct records will be displayed.
If your domain is pointed to our Name Servers you may set directly the right MX records with a click from this tool.
If your domain is pointed to external name severs, copy the 3 MX records listed as the expected defaults and add them in DNS zone of your domain where the zone is managed.
Step 6: Configure your Email Client(s)
Once you have pointed your MX records to the new server, you should set up your email client to work with the new server. If you are not sure how to do this, use this guide – How to configure my email client?
Make sure you update all the mail clients you use, so they start getting your mail messages from the new server.
You can also use our web mail client to work with your email account on our server.
Step 7: Do a final syncing migration (optional, but recommended)
The MX record change may take up to 72 hours to fully propagate globally. During that time you may receive some of your email messages on the old server. To make sure you have all your messages on the new server (even the few ones that may have reached your old one after the initial migration), we recommend that you launch one more email migration 72 hours after the MX record change repeating the first 4 steps described above. It may appear that the Email Migrator is transferring your whole email account again, however duplicate emails will NOT be created.