Thinking of switching your email hosting provider? It can be an overwhelming process just at the thought – but we’re here to help you through the process.
You first need to ask yourself why you wish to make the email migration to another hosting provider. Are you unhappy with your current one, or found a better deal elsewhere? Regardless, we’ll help you make the transition as smooth as possible before you buy a new email. Keep on reading to find out how to transfer email hosting providers easily with our step-by-step guide.
What is email hosting?
Exactly what is email hosting? It’s a service by a hosting provider that allocates space on their mail servers for clients to save their emails. Essentially, if you run a business and utilise an email hosting solution, all your firm's email correspondences and attached files reside on a mail server.
While free versions exist, creating a custom email and hosting it with a reputable provider ensures professionalism, lots more storage and a whole host of other benefits. Plus, it allows for a distinct, branded email address, setting you apart from generic domains like @gmail.com or @live.co.uk. With a private email solution, you isolate yourself from third-party providers which may not come with what you need. But with a dedicated email hosting package, you get what you pay for and then some – particularly when it comes to storage, organisation, and brand image.
Can I transfer my email address to another provider?
Yes! You can switch your email address to a different provider, but how smoothly this goes and what it exactly entails can vary.
Essentially, if your email address is hosted by a provider like Outlook or Gmail, you can't take the exact address e.g. "yourname@gmail.com" – and move it to another service (like making it "yourname@outlook.com"). However, you can create a new email address with a new provider and then set up your old email account to forward all incoming emails to your new address. This is also known as email forwarding.
This way, you won't miss any emails sent to the old address. It’s best practice to inform your contacts about the change and update any accounts or services that use your old email. While there’s a bit of planning involved, it's definitely doable to transfer email addresses to a new provider.
Why switch email hosting providers?
We’ve talked about paid vs free emails before and the benefits of the former – particularly from a branding and capability perspective. If you have a paid email account with a hosting provider already, here are some more reasons why you’d want to switch to another.
1. Poor service
Perhaps you’ve been experiencing a delay in emails, poor customer service handling from your provider, emails not sending out, maxing out your space and various other issues. This can be bad news if you’re running a company (especially with a branded business email) as not having issues dealt with may impact your customers. If your host is doing little to help mitigate these issues, then switching to a reputable email hosting provider is the way to go.
2. Better services elsewhere
It’s all about being the best, so if another email hosting provider has additional services that they include in the price, or have as an add-on for a small fee, then this may be a reason to switch to a new email hosting provider. As an example, IMAP and POP3 are protocols that we support with all email hosting packages. Some users prefer one over the other, and we believe offering both as an option gives potential customers the choice.
Plus, if your business is growing rapidly, you may benefit from webmail hosting on Microsoft Exchange – a solution for pros with enhanced productivity tools (like our Microsoft 365 packages), as well as email hosting and Outlook licensing.
3. Cost reduction
Whether you’re looking to upgrade (or downgrade), cost will always be a huge factor. You may even find you’re paying for things you don’t need, so switching email hosts can help reduce your monthly bills.
4. The need to scale
That being said, in some cases, you may need more resources or additional features that your current provider simply doesn’t offer. If you’ve found another provider that has add-ons, or specific features included within their pricing, then switching email hosts may make sense.
5. Consolidation
It’s not uncommon to host your email with one provider and your website with another. For some clients, we find that they want a holistic approach to their hosting needs, and will often transfer web hosting and/or email to us so that everything is in one place. From a customer experience perspective, this makes helping you much easier and you won’t have to worry about what features can work with a second provider since everything is in one place.
6. To improve your brand image
Having your domain name within your email can drastically improve the perception of your brand. This is because customers are more likely to trust an email with business branding than they are a third-party provider like Gmail.
Things to do before migrating email providers
1. Fully research your new provider
You’ll need to research what your next email provider can actually offer you. Is it more storage space, email addresses, additional layers of security, calendars or collaboration tools? Perhaps there’s something a bit more specific, so you’ll need to do your research.
2. Back up all emails
Before migrating your email, it’s important to backup all of your emails and other files from your previous one. Make sure you receive everything, including your custom folders, spam, unread messages, and trash mailbox. Obviously, if you want a fresh start, you can skip this step entirely – though we’d recommend following through so you can transfer all of your contacts with ease.
3. Let clients know
As we mentioned previously, it’s important to let clients and staff know you’ll be migrating email providers. Be sure to set a date of when the migration is expected to be complete, and let them know that your old email will still work, but forward to your new email address hosted by your new provider.
How to change email hosting providers
Now that we’ve established several reasons why you’d want to migrate email hosting providers, here’s how to actually do it the right way. We’ve kept this fairly generalised so that you can navigate on your chosen client – be that Plesk or cPanel.
1. Clear your inbox
Clear out anything you don’t need. This could be old confirmation emails that are no longer relevant, newsletter subscriptions, offers and the like. While you’re at it, you may wish to unsubscribe from newsletters that you no longer want. It's also a good idea to delete large attachments or move them to a separate location to reduce the size of your inbox. With fewer emails to migrate, the less you’ll have to sift through with your new provider.
2. Download your emails
Once you have a list of emails you’re happy to keep, you’ll need to download them. With your current email hosting service, select the emails in your inbox and drag them into a local inbox folder. While this process may take a bit of time, it can act as your last “filter” to ensure you’re only keeping the necessary emails to migrate across to your new email provider.
3. Reduce your TTL
Ideally, you’ll need to minimise email service downtime during the email hosting transfer. This is especially true if you’re running the likes of an ecommerce store or a time-sensitive service.
Contact your current provider to reduce your Domain Name Server (DNS) Time-To-Live (TTL) to 300 (5 minutes). The TTL represents the time it takes for global DNS servers to refresh their cache and update their records. By reducing the TTL, any changes you make to your DNS will propagate faster, which will ensure a smoother transition to your new hosting provider.
4. Get started with your new provider
Before updating your DNS and downloading your emails onto your new email, you’ll need to get your new email hosting set up with your chosen provider! Just keep in mind that it needs to be one that supports the right protocol (IMAP or POP3).
You’ll also need to ensure the new email service is activated and that you have received all the necessary information, including access credentials and server details. If the new email address does not already exist, you’ll need to create it on your new provider's platform. Contact your new hosting provider to find out how to create the new email – they’ll then provide you with the necessary steps to set up your account.
5. Update your DNS records
1. Update your mail exchange records
Say you only want to migrate your email hosting but wish to keep your web hosting – you only need to update the MX (mail exchange) records for your domain, but what does this mean?
Essentially, MX records specify the mail server responsible for accepting email messages for your domain, so this is a very important step to ensure everything migrates correctly. In order to do this, contact your new email hosting provider to obtain your MX record details. Once you have them, log in to your domain registrar's control panel and update the MX records according to the instructions provided by your new email hosting provider.
2. Complete your DNS propagation
After updating your MX records (or Nameserver), it may take some time for the DNS changes to propagate across the web. Also known as DNS propagation, it can take up to 72 hours to complete, but in most cases is much sooner. During DNS propagation, some global nameservers may still direct email to your old server, while others will start directing it to your new server. It’s worth keeping an eye on both, particularly if you have business-critical communication – at least until the propagation is 100% complete.
6. Download your emails
Contact your old email hosting provider to get the server IP address of your old email account, so that you can update your new email hosting provider settings with this information. This will let your email host establish a connection with the old server and retrieve any outstanding emails. After successfully connecting, browse through your inbox and download all the emails that appear in your new inbox.
How to minimise downtime during your email hosting migration
When migrating your email host, you may experience a little bit of downtime. To avoid or greatly reduce this, here are some steps you can take.
1. Migrate after hours
When traffic or queries are typically at their lowest, this can be a good time to make the move from one email host to another.
2. Reduce the transfer volume
If you’re able to, we’d recommend deleting old or unnecessary emails if you no longer have a use for them. This is so you aren’t moving emails you no longer need, which can reduce the overall transfer time. Worried you may still need some of your emails? Consider archiving them instead.
3. Check bandwidth speed
By knowing your bandwidth speed, you should be able to work out roughly how long the transfer will take. We always recommend overestimating to allow room for errors or additional checks before migrating.
Frequently asked questions about transferring email hosting providers
Will I lose any emails during the email transfer process?
When following the step-by-step instructions provided above to a tee – with the added steps of cleaning up existing emails and reducing your TTL – you should not lose any emails.
How long does DNS propagation take?
Typically, DNS propagation can take up to 72 hours, although this isn’t usually the case and can take as little as a couple of hours. Things like your TTL settings, network configurations and Nameservers can prolong this time, but 72 hours is generally the maximum time it will take.
Can I transfer my email address to a new provider and still keep my custom domain?
Absolutely. You can easily switch your email hosting provider while keeping your custom domain. Your email address, such as john.smith@mydomain.com, is tied to your domain (john-smith.com) – not specifically to the hosting provider. This means that when you transition to a new host, you're just redirecting where your emails for that domain are stored and accessed. Before you begin the process of transferring your domain, just make sure your new provider supports domain transfers.
Can I forward emails from my old email address to the new one?
Yes, you just need to configure your old email to forward incoming messages. This is a process known as email forwarding, and email providers can help you set this up. Simply navigate to a section within your control panel (usually along the lines of “Forwarding) and set up a rule that
forwards incoming emails from the old one to the new address. Be sure to let your contacts know of your new address, either through business comms or in your email footer.
Ready to transfer your email to a reputable email hosting provider such as ourselves? Contact us to find out more about email hosting, as well as how we can support you with your business efforts, such as web hosting, reseller hosting and much more.
