Business Email Migration

Common email moves we handle

• Hosting email to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. The most common move: mail sits on cPanel or Plesk hosting bundled with a website and has outgrown it. Mail is copied over IMAP.
• Old ISP addresses. Addresses such as @btinternet.com or @sky.com cannot move with you, but the mail inside them can, and we set up forwarding while clients update their contacts.
• Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 and back. See Google Workspace to Microsoft 365.
• Microsoft 365 tenant to tenant after a merger, a sale or leaving a previous IT provider.
• PST files and old archives imported into Exchange Online archive mailboxes so they are searchable again.
• Email to new hosting when you want to stay on simple hosted email. Our sister company dijitul DNS provides email hosting, and we can move you there.

Doing the DNS in the right order

Most email migration problems are DNS problems. The order matters:

1. Lower TTLs on the MX and related records a day or two before, so changes take effect in minutes rather than hours.
2. Copy mail first while the old system is still live.
3. Change the MX record to the new provider.
4. Update SPF so the new provider is allowed to send for your domain. Remove the old host only once nothing else sends through it. Keep a single SPF record; two SPF records cause failures.
5. Add Autodiscover (for Microsoft 365) so Outlook and phones find the new server.
6. Final sync to catch mail delivered to the old server while DNS updated.
7. Turn on DKIM and set DMARC once mail is flowing properly.

If your domain DNS is managed by the same company as your website, moving the website can break your email without anyone touching the mailboxes. Our domain and DNS support sorts that out, and our guide explains DNS propagation.

What IMAP moves and what it does not

IMAP is the standard way to copy mail from hosting providers, and it copies every folder and message. It does not copy:

• Calendars and contacts. We export them as ICS and CSV or vCard files and import them.
• Rules and filters. We note your important ones and recreate them.
• Signatures and autocomplete lists. We set signatures again and show staff how to rebuild suggestions.

Very large mailboxes (tens of gigabytes) can take a day or more to copy because hosting servers limit how fast mail can be read. We start early so the cut-over is not delayed.

After the move

• Outlook gets a fresh profile, which stops the old server being cached and the endless password prompts.
• Phones are set up again, ideally with the Outlook app for Microsoft 365 or the Gmail app for Google.
• We send test messages to Gmail, Outlook.com and a business address, and check headers for SPF, DKIM and DMARC passes. See email deliverability.
• The old service is cancelled only when you are happy.

Shared mailboxes, aliases and forwarding

Email addresses that are not a single person's mailbox are the ones most often forgotten in a migration. Before we switch anything we list every address on the old system and decide how each one works on the new one:

• Shared inboxes such as info@ or sales@ become shared mailboxes in Microsoft 365 or group inboxes in Google Workspace, so several people can work from them without sharing a password.
• Aliases are added to the right user so mail to old addresses still arrives.
• Forwarders to external addresses are reviewed. Automatic forwarding outside the business is blocked by default in Microsoft 365 for good security reasons, and attackers often use it after a mailbox is compromised.
• Catch-all addresses are usually dropped, because they attract spam.

Cost

Email migrations are quoted upfront. The price depends on how many mailboxes, how much data, and the source and destination. For larger office moves, see Microsoft 365 migration. If you just need a single mailbox moved or a DNS record fixed after a move, that is ad-hoc work at £45 an hour + VAT, 30 minutes minimum, then 15-minute blocks.

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