So, as I posted elsewhere, I just moved my email accounts from Plusnet to Mythic Beasts. My email uses my own personal domain names, and used to be forwarded to my "user@xxxx.plus.com" account. I needed to make my email instead get forwarded to Mythic beasts
One of the issues is "what happens to my old email?". Here's a few not that might give you some help. I'm going to assume that you are using some sort of mail client on a PC, so maybe Outlook or Thunderbird
1) POP3
This is easy: create a NEW email config for your new email service. All your old mail will stay (locally on your PC) in the folder structure for the old email: when you are happy that the email HAS moved over, and thus there's nothing left to collect at your old email service, you can simply copy or move the email or the folders from the old email setup to the new email setup.. Once you've done that, then you can simply delete the old email setup.
2) IMAP
The big problem here is "what about my old email, it's all on my old server?". My wife uses IMAP on her tablet for her emails. I was using Outlook on my PC to "monitor" my wife's email, using IMAP. So, I copied all of her historical emails from the IMAP account folders into a local folder on my PC. Then I set up the new IMAP account for M-B, and checked it was working, then I just dragged that local email into the new account's IMAP folders. Outlook will then upload all those emails to the IMAP server. Then, on her tablet, I just edited her email config: it lost all the old IMAP emails, but reloaded them all (might take a while) from the M-B server.
(If you are feeling lucky, you could just copy from the old IMAP folders to the New IMAP folders: I wasn't THAT brave!!)
3) More advanced stuff.
Had I simply switched the forwarding, the switch would have been instant: My email goes into Namesco, then it would be forwarded to M-B instead of Plusnet. However, I also decided to take the bold step of moving the DNS for my personal Domain Names over to M-B: their DNS is actually pretty good, flexible, and easy to configure. The problem is that it can take up to 24 hours for the world to realise there has been a change, so email could go EITHER to Plusnet OR to M-B in that period.... Ooops!
So, I got clever: when I set up my new email accounts at Mythic Beasts, as well as getting it to put the emails into an M-B email mailbox (which is where my email client would collect them from), I *also* told it to forward a copy on to my plusnet email...
So, originally, the email flow was email -->Namesco --> Plusnet, now it's email --> M-B --> copy sent to Plusnet. This means that, until I changed my email client setup, I would STILL get my email sent to Plusnet! Sweet!
Once I was happy my emails were 100% flowing via M-B (I used the M-B webmail - which actually WORKS!!! - to see when mail came into my new M-B), I could - almost at my leisure - move my email account over to use MB. Rather than setting up a new email config on my Outlook, I just repointed the existing one to the new M-B server. Ok, so I got a day's worth of duplicate email - big deal!
4) What about my Phone / Tablet?
With MY account (POP 3 to my PC), I have it set to leave 20 days of email on the server (with POP3,everything gets downloaded to my own PC). My phone / tablet then connects to the email server using IMAP, which means I don't have to ever to any email pruning: it automatically gets deleted when my POP3 email setup deletes it on the server after 20 days. The only (non-)issue was that, when I moved over, there was no email history: whilst I COULD have set up a temporary IMAP account on my Outlook, to copy some emails over (see (2) above), I just left it: my phone is mainly used to see new emails as they arrive, it's not THAT often I need to refer back.
For my wife's account (which is 100% IMAP): I did step 2 above, using my Outlook to populate the new email account at M-B with her historical emails. On her tablet, I deleted her old IMAP account, and set up her new one: the IMAP on her tablet immediately started to 'collect' all her historical email.
In both cases, no email was lost.
5) And my Laptop?
So, I have a laptop, and historically, I used it weekdays. I historically set it up to use POP3: no problem, with 20 days email on the server, after the weekend, it would just catch up... but it meant I had access to my email offline.
I'm now retired, so it just tends to get used when I go on holiday / visiting family. It's still using POP3, but there will be gaps of emails missing: not an issue, my email is all on my main PC. So I just synced up the email from Plusnet, then changed the account to point instead to M-B instead: works fine.
Whilst I used Outlook to do this, it should be 100% possible to do this with Thunderbird. Whilst you COULD possibly do it all using a tablet of a phone, it's likely to be a lot more fiddly!
6) How does this compare to the current Plusnet email migration?
Many of you will be using your "user@xxxx.plus.com" as your email address. The problem with that is that if either (a) you move your broadband (and thus your email); or (b) plusnet decides to move your mail, then you may be a little uncertain about how secure your historical email is, and that you might lose some. It is EXACLY for that reason that, many years ago, I got my own domain name, so that my email address belongs to ME. I control it, I can forward it to wherever I like. If I make a change, it's 100% under MY control. I would strongly suggest that you might look at doing the same.
In the meantime, if you use Thunderbird or Outlook on a PC, and you use IMAP for your mail, then you can do the same as in step 2 above: take a copy of your email into a local folder. If the Plusnet to Greenby migration works, then no problem: you just point your email account over to Greenby (instead of plusnet): your existing emails will apparently be deleted, then all retrieved again from your new Greenby account. If you have any issues, then you still have that backup in that local folder.
7) Tidying up the old stuff?
THEORETICALLY, I could have use the Plusnet Webmail client to go and tidy up the old email, but if I'm honest, I'd rather just watch paint drying peeling peeling, it would be 100 times quicker and more reliable / satisfying! I'll just let Plusnet do their thing, migrate it over to Greenby, then, if I feel so inclined, I'll go there and clean it up.
Its not really a problem: last time I looked, I had about 400 emails (mostly spam!) over the last 20 days, my wife probably had under 1000 in her IMAP account.
I hope this gives you a few ideas about how to move email accounts. Happy to try and answer any questions.
