When you’re moving hosting to a new provider, your old emails will generally not be available (on the new hosting account) unless you migrate them manually. To do this you will need the following.
- Both servers must support the IMAP email protocol. All hosting accounts with LetsHost support IMAP connections
- The username, password and incoming mail server of the email account you wish to migrate
- An email client that supports IMAP (such as Thunderbird).
The steps to move over the emails themselves to the new hosting provider are as follows:
- Create the email account on your new server that you had on your old server. Use the same spelling and capitalization
- Give the new email account the same password that you used on your old server. You can change the password after the migration process is done, if desired
- In your local email client, create two new email accounts. These accounts will both be for the same email address and use the same password
- Additionally, both accounts should be set as IMAP. The incoming mail server (or IMAP server) will be different for each account. You should use the servers hostname for the new server and the IP address/hostname for the old server
- The servers hostname of your LetsHost account can be found by using the form below
- With both accounts online, open up the inbox for the account that connects to your old server. Select the email you wish to transfer for and copy it (select it and then control + C on Windows). Next select the inbox that connects to the new server and paste it (control + V). The same process can be done for folders as well
- If you have a lot of emails, give the accounts a few minutes to finish syncing up. Once they’re done, your old emails will be in your mailbox on the new server
To find out the correct hostname to enter for the incoming mail server for your LetsHost account, enter your domain name (without WWW) and click Lookup.
If you have any questions on the above, please submit a ticket and a member of the team will be happy to assist further.