Transfer Email from Previous Host
There are few steps you need to take in order to move your email account and all the messages you have in it from your previous host to SiteGround.
-
Step 1Backup your existing emails using an email application
First, make sure that you have a local email application linked and configured with your old email account (Thunderbird, Mac Mail, etc.). Make sure that your accounts are set to work with IMAP and that you have synhcronzied your local application with your server. This will ensure that you have all your messages fetched on your local computer.
-
Step 2Create the email accounts from Site Tools
Next, you need to create from Site Tools > Email > Accounts your email acounts on the SiteGround servers. If you want to migrate an email account with address [email protected], create this account [email protected] from Site Tools. It’s like creating a duplicate account of your already existing one, but you are doing it on your new host server while the old one is active on your previous server.
-
step 3Configure the new email account and move existing messages
Using the same email application, add your newly created email account using the settings provided by Site Tools. You can get the email configuration from Site Tools > Email > Accounts > kebab menu (the action button next to the email account in the Manage Email Accounts section) and click Mail Configuration.
Then, using drag-and-drop, move all the folders from your old account to the new SiteGround account (Inbox, Sent, etc.). Your email application will start copying the messages from the old server to the new one. Note, that this may take a while so make sure the operation is completed before you proceed.
-
step 4Update your domain’s MX records
Now that you have your messages on our servers, update the domain’s MX records so that your email service is handled by your new hosting account at SiteGround. To do that, set the following MX records in the DNS zone for your domain name:
Priority Destination 10 mx10.mailspamprotection.com 20 mx20.mailspamprotection.com 30 mx30.mailspamprotection.com -
step 5Remove your old email accounts
Once you start receiving your emails to your new SiteGround account on your application, check if there are some messages received on the old account and move them to the new one. Once that final sync is over, you can safely delete your old account.
