How to Migrate Email from Another Host

Email is the part of a hosting move people worry about most, and reasonably so — files can be re-uploaded, but a lost inbox is gone. The good news is that a careful migration loses nothing. The key is doing things in the right order.

The order that matters

The mistake that causes lost mail is switching MX records first and copying messages afterwards. Do it the other way around:

1. Create the mailboxes here 2. Copy the old mail across 3. Then switch MX records 4. Watch both mailboxes for a few days

While MX still points at the old host, nothing is at risk. You can take as long as you need over steps 1 and 2.

Step 1 — Inventory the old mailboxes

Before touching anything, list every address on the old host: real mailboxes, forwarders, aliases, autoresponders and any catch-all.

Forwarders are the ones people forget. careers@ quietly redirecting to a personal address will simply stop working after the move, and nobody notices until a candidate complains weeks later.

Note each mailbox's size too. A 15 GB mailbox needs a plan with room for it.

Step 2 — Create them here

In cPanel, under Email → Email Accounts, create each address with the same username as before. Matching addresses exactly makes the transfer straightforward and means clients only need a server change, not a full reconfiguration.

Recreate forwarders under Email → Forwarders and any autoresponders now, so nothing is missed later.

Step 3 — Copy the old mail across

Three approaches, best first.

Ask us. Free migration covers email, and this is the option we would pick for you. Send us the old host's cPanel or IMAP credentials on WhatsApp and we will transfer mailboxes, folder structure and read/unread state, with no downtime. It is the least error-prone route by a wide margin.

Use a desktop client. Add both accounts to Thunderbird or Outlook as IMAP, then drag folders from the old account to the new one. It works, it needs no special tools, and it is slow — plan on hours for a large mailbox, and leave the machine awake.

Use an IMAP sync tool. imapsync and similar copy server to server and handle large mailboxes well. Effective, but command-line and easy to get wrong.

Whichever you use, verify before moving on. Open the new mailbox in webmail and check that folders, attachments and older messages are all present.

Step 4 — Lower the MX TTL first

A day before the switch, drop the TTL on your MX records at your current DNS provider to 300 seconds. TTL controls how long other servers cache the record, and the default is often several hours.

Lowering it first means the cutover propagates in minutes rather than most of a day. It is a small step that removes most of the risk from step 5.

Step 5 — Switch the MX records

Point MX at your NexzaHost server. If your DNS is managed in cPanel, this is already correct and you have nothing to do. If it is at Cloudflare or your registrar, update it there.

Two things to check:

• The mail record must be DNS only at Cloudflare, not proxied. Cloudflare cannot proxy SMTP, and an orange-cloud record breaks mail delivery.
• Remove the old host's MX entries rather than leaving them alongside. Two sets of MX records means mail arrives at whichever server answers, and you will have messages split across two places.

Step 6 — Watch both mailboxes

Keep the old account alive for at least a week, ideally two. Some senders cache MX records aggressively, and a straggler will occasionally deliver to the old server days later.

Check the old mailbox daily until it stops receiving. Only then cancel the old hosting.

Step 7 — Update the clients

Once mail flows here, update each phone and desktop client to the new server: incoming and outgoing mail.yourdomain.com, ports 993 and 465. Our settings guide has the details.

Then run AutoSSL in cPanel with the mail subdomain selected, or clients will warn about the certificate.

Do not forget SPF and DKIM

Your old host's SPF record still lists their servers. Once mail sends from here, that record is wrong and your outgoing mail will start failing authentication.

Update SPF and set up DKIM for the new server — cPanel's Email Deliverability page handles both. Our deliverability guide explains what each record does.

This step is skipped constantly, and it is why "email worked fine until we moved hosts" turns into a spam-folder problem a week later.