Change email provider with the ImapSync service
Introduction
This document describes how to migrate your email mailbox using an external migration service. This method is recommended if your device has a slow internet connection, if you only use a smartphone, or if your mailbox is very large. Emails are transferred via the migration service’s servers and not through your internet connection. However, this method has the disadvantage of requiring trust in the migration service for your data.
This tutorial explains how to migrate your email mailbox using “ImapSync Online”. The service is offered by the French author Gilles Lamiral of the open-source tool ImapSync and can be accessed via his website. The service relies on the command-line tool ImapSync and directly displays its output.
Other methods for migrating mailboxes are listed here.
Requirements
- In this tutorial, we assume that you manage your emails using the IMAP protocol.
- You need the login information for your old provider’s mailbox.
Steps to follow
The migration of your email address and mailbox is divided into several points:
- Find the login information for the old mailbox
- Set up a temporary email forwarding
- Create a new email mailbox at hosting.fr
- Migrate emails and folders with the migration service
- Set up your email client for the new mailbox
- Migrate the domain (optional)
Find the login information for the old mailbox
To be able to forward and retrieve emails from your old mailbox from your current provider, you will need the login information.
It is advisable to download emails from the old provider via the IMAP protocol. You will therefore need the following data:
- IMAP server address
- Port for connecting to the IMAP server
- Username and password for connecting to the IMAP server
Ideally, you have already integrated the account of your old email mailbox into your email client such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Apple Mail.
Set up a temporary email forwarding
To ensure that all emails sent to your old mailbox arrive directly in the new mailbox after migration, you must set up forwarding for emails that are still delivered to the old box. If you also migrate your domain to hosting.fr later, this forwarding will of course no longer be necessary. The configuration of forwarding differs from one provider to another, but it is generally possible after logging into the provider’s website. Please consult your old provider or contact them to set up forwarding.
Create a new email mailbox at hosting.fr
If you do not yet have a mailbox at hosting.fr, please first create a new mailbox.
Note the username and password during setup.
Migration using the “ImapSync Online” migration service
Visit Audriga’s site at the following address:
https://imapsync.lamiral.info/X/
Then click on “Email migration service” > “Start migration”. On the next page, click “Next”. You will then be prompted to enter the login information for your email mailboxes:
- Enter the IMAP data of your old email mailbox on the left.
- Enter the login information for your new mailbox on the right. The email server of the new box is
mail.routing.net.
Then click on “Sync or resync!”.
If your login information is correct and the IMAP server accepts it, the message “Status: 200 OK to sync IMAP boxes.” should appear in the “Console of imapsync run” window. Once the synchronization process is successfully completed, the message “State: Finished and response is ready” will appear.
Set up your email client for the new mailbox
Please configure the mailbox in your email client. Please use the IMAP protocol instead of POP3. The IMAP protocol is more modern than the POP3 protocol. The latter only allows retrieving and deleting emails from the mail server. However, the IMAP protocol allows synchronized management of folders and emails both on the mail server and on the client. Since the client and mail server are automatically synchronized, it is thus possible to access the same mailbox from multiple devices. Moreover, the IMAP protocol also allows uploading emails from the computer to the server. You can therefore copy emails from your old mailbox that are already saved on your computer into the new mailbox.
Guides for configuring the new account with different email clients are available:
Please configure the email account at hosting.fr according to the guide corresponding to your email client.
Domain transfer
The procedure for transferring your domain will be described in a separate article.