Migrating Domain-Based E-Mail

It’s easy enough to forward one e-mail address to another. However it’s a different story when it comes to migrating a domain-based e-mail address.

• You have a domain, www.example.com.
• You have a hosted e-mail address, you@example.com.
• You want to keep your domain host where it is, but host your e-mail elsewhere (such as Google Apps or Windows Live Admin Center).

The biggest problem when doing this is that you don’t want to lose any mail after the migration has taken place. During the transition some mail will be delivered to your old mail host and some to the new.

There is a way to do this so you don’t lose any mail. Read on to find out how.

The Big Question: Why Bother?

Some would question why you would want to do this in the first place. If your existing hosted domain e-mail is working, why change it?

There are three answers:

1. Accessibility
2. Better spam protection
3. Space

Accessibility

Hosted domain-based e-mail – no matter what the provider – is usually just the basics and nothing more. On mail web host providers you are essentially forced to use an e-mail client because the web-based way is wildly insecure. Under most circumstances all you will only have an http way of logging in and no SSL (i.e. https) method available – not unless you flip over more money per month just to have it. Simply put it’s not worth the cash to spend it on SSL just to have secure logins when you can get it for free from Microsoft or Google.

And when I say basic, I mean basic. Ordinarily you’ll have no communication between e-mail client and web. No hosted calendaring (unless you pay), no web-or-client contact list (again, unless you pay) and so on.

Better spam protection

If you have mail forwarded to a Gmail or Hotmail e-mail account from a domain-based account you will (not might) get inundated with spam.

“But my Hotmail/Gmail spam filter works with my forwarded mail! What’s the problem?”

The problem is that the spam filtration is curtailed to a large degree if you forward mail into an account. The reason? It’s because forwarded mail is considered “trusted”, so the account being forwarded into has to play a “balancing act” of sorts with its spam filters to determine what’s spam and what isn’t in addition to decided what’s trusted and what isn’t. The whole business is just a mess.

If you source your mail at the provider directly (meaning no forwarding), the spam filters will do their job better. It’s the difference between getting 5 and 500 spams daily – no joke.

Space

Unless you shell out gobs of cash you will never be able to match the space given from alternative mail providers.

Once again, Microsoft and Google will be mentioned here. You get 5GB minimum from Microsoft and over 7GB from Google – per account.

When you have the space, you can store mail and simply not worry about it. However when hosted at your web host provider, you always have to worry about it. Eventually the box will get full. Do you know what happens then? Your site gets shut down until you pay more money for more space.

“What if I downloaded everything with POP?”

Sure, you could do that. But then your mail is only accessible on one computer because it’s all downloaded there.

What you need before taking the plunge

If you’re migrating to Windows Live Admin Center, it’s required you have the Windows Live Mail e-mail client as Live accounts are Windows Live (i.e. Hotmail) based. For everything that uses standard mail servers via IMAP and SMTP (including Google Apps), Windows Live Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird will do. For anything that requires Microsoft Exchange specific connectivity or the alternative Zimbra, you need to buy a copy of Microsoft Outlook or use web-based solely as a free alternative.

Step 1. Pointing to the new mail servers

This unfortunately is difficult to explain because all web host providers are different – however one thing remains the same, the MX record.

“MX” means Mail eXchange record. This is a resource record in the DNS specifying where mail should be routed for your domain.

Currently, your mail is hosted at your web host provider. They provide an internal IP address for this on their side.

You need to change this over to the MX record(s) of your new mail provider.

Depending on what provider you chose, you may need to only modify one MX record or several. For example, Google Apps requires 5 of them.

This is undoubtedly the most difficult part of the process. If you’ve never done it before it is very confusing because it is server-level admin stuff.

However I have a few tips to help you along.

What does priority mean?

The priority of an MX record simply means the pecking order of how mail is routed. With Google Apps for example, ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM has a priority of 1. That means that per the routing schema, that server will always be attempted to be contacted first when mail is routed to you. The other servers are there for redundancy (if the primary fails, the other responds next and so on).

What does TTL mean?

“Time To Live”. It is the amount of time set (in seconds).

If you want the particulars, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_live

You don’t have to know what it means, but you do have to know what the TTL values should be. Your mail provider will give these values to you. For example, Google Apps states that all TTL values should be set to 3600 (1 hour).

Should I delete my old mail server settings once I input the new ones?

Not until you move all your mail to the new server. More on that in a moment.

Step 2. Configuring the mail client

Why a client and not web-based?

Because the mail client can access both the old and new servers. You’ll need to have this kind of accessibility so you can move all your mail seamlessly without losing anything.

Reconfigure your OLD mail server settings

The first thing you have to do is change your mail server settings in your client to access mail via your web host’s server names and not your domain names.

In plain English:

If your web site is www.example.com, your mail server setting in your mail client is most likely mail.example.com. This needs to be changed over to your web host’s mail domain name – OR – the IP address of your OLD mail server.

An example web host mail server name would be example12345.yourwebhost.com. If you can’t find out this information, submit a support ticket to your web host provider and ask – they will tell you.

Alternatively you should be able to access mail direct by IP address instead of an alternative mail server name. To get this information, do the following:

1. Open up a command/terminal prompt.
2. Type PING mail.example.com (where example.com is your site) and press Enter.

The response you get will show the IP address immediately. Go into your mail client and use that as the incoming mail server name.

Why are we doing this?

Because you’re switching mail over to another mail provider. If you keep it as is inside the client, you’ll completely lose access to your old mail server. You don’t want to stop access until you want to and not the other way around.

Set up your NEW e-mail account within the same e-mail client

Your new e-mail provider should provide “temporary” mail server names so you can access your mail without using mail.example.com. Set up an e-mail account as you normally would.

Send a test mail to yourself from the NEW account

You need to make sure this works after setting up the account.

I’m confused! How do I do this again…?

There are examples of how to have multiple e-mail accounts within a single e-mail client. I suggest reading this and looking a “Method 2: The IMAP Way”. That shows verbatim two accounts in the same e-mail client and how to do it step by step. The only difference is that you’re using two different mail providers for the same account.

Step 3. Migrate!

When you have both e-mail accounts set up, now you can start dragging/dropping mail from one to the other.

This is a slow process. You most likely have a ton of mail to move. Do it slowly and be patient. Eventually you’ll get everything moved over.

Step 4. Purposely set the priority on MX records for your old mail to “low”

There’s a high probability you’re completely confused at this point, so I’m going to recap what we’ve done here.

1. You signed up with an alternative mail provider. It’s ready to send and receive mail. But your mail is still pointing to your old mail servers. You want to keep the same domain e-mail name, migrate all your mail (from old server to new), not lose any mail in the process, continue to receive mail while the transition is taking place and have a seamless transition. At this point we haven’t changed any server-specific records to tell the internet “Yes, please deliver mail here (to new mail server) and not here (old mail server).”
2. You’ve entered in your new MX records provided by your new mail host into your web host provider – but your old MX records are still there.
3. You’ve reconfigured your old mail servers to point to the web host’s domain or its direct IP – and you’ve set up your new account (with the same e-mail name) in the same client. Both accounts – while having the same name – are on separate servers.
4. You moved the mail from the old server to the new one.

At this point you’re going to be receiving mail from two separate locations.

You’ve already input your new MX records with the proper priorities.

Now it’s time to change the priority on the old MX records.

This is simple – change them all to 20. This will put them as the lowest priority, putting the new mail servers first.

Step 5. Wait until the old mail server stops receiving mail

What will happen over the course of a few days is that you will still be receiving mail at your old server. When this happens, drag/drop it to the new account. Keep doing this until the old server stops receiving mail entirely (or just receives nothing but spam).

If you get doubles where mail is received at both the old and new server, just delete whatever duplicates appear on the old.

Step 6. When you’re sure the old mail server is not receiving anymore, delete the old MX records.

After a few days (possibly a week), the old mail server will no longer be receiving mail addressed to you and will all arrive on the new server..

..or..

Duplicates will always appear. The old will get mail and your new will get mail.

When the point happens where your new account is getting all the mail you want it to – remove the old MX records.

Step 7. Wait 2 days until the old mail server stops receiving mail entirely.

Removing an MX record doesn’t mean the old server will suddenly stop accepting mail. It make take 48 hours for the change to take complete effect.

When the old mail server has completely stopped accepting mail, you can safely remove the old account from your mail client.

At this point you can switch over to web-based mail completely (if using Google Apps or Windows Live Admin Center) or continue to use the client. Your choice.