Moving your email to Flashcloud from another provider

The safest way to move email is to sync your mailboxes over IMAP before you touch DNS, then cut over MX records once every folder matches. If you'd rather not run the sync yourself, our Free Transfer team can move files, databases, and email accounts for you at no cost. Either path works; the difference is how much of the process you want to do by hand.

Before you start: create the mailboxes here first

Your new Flashcloud email accounts need to exist before any sync can write messages into them. Create each address in the portal under your hosting service's Email tile, matching the addresses on your old host exactly (same local part, same domain). Note the server settings you'll need for the sync: mail.yourdomain.com, IMAP port 993 (SSL), full email address as the username. Full details, including the fallback hostname to use if your domain isn't pointed here yet, are in Email server settings (IMAP and SMTP).

Do this for every mailbox you're moving before starting the sync. If you skip a mailbox, imapsync has nothing to write into and fails immediately for that account.

Syncing mail with imapsync

imapsync is the standard open-source tool for copying mail between two IMAP servers, folder by folder, without disturbing the source. It's the right choice here because it doesn't require MX to point at us yet. Your old host keeps receiving mail normally while the copy runs.

A basic run looks like this:

imapsync --host1 mail.oldhost.com --user1 you@yourdomain.com --password1 'oldpass' --host2 mail.yourdomain.com --port2 993 --ssl2 --user2 you@yourdomain.com --password2 'newpass'

• --host1 / --user1 / --password1: your old mail server and credentials.
• --host2 / --user2 / --password2: mail.yourdomain.com (or the fallback hostname) and the new mailbox's password.
• --port2 993 --ssl2: matches the IMAP SSL settings above.
• --dry: add this flag for a first pass. It reports what would move without writing anything, so you can catch a wrong password or a folder-naming mismatch before the real copy.

Run one imapsync command per mailbox. For a handful of accounts, do them one at a time and check the summary line at the end (messages copied, skipped, errored). For a large accounts, run each sync in the background and check back rather than watching a slow, single-threaded copy.

Run it twice

Sync once early to move the bulk of old mail while you're still testing everything else. Then, right before the MX cutover, run imapsync again on each mailbox. The second pass is fast: it only copies messages that arrived since the first run, so your new mailbox is fully caught up the moment you flip MX.

Sequencing the MX cutover

Order matters here. Do it in this sequence:

1. Create mailboxes on Flashcloud and run the first imapsync pass, days or weeks ahead of cutover.
2. Test the new mailboxes: log into webmail or point a spare email client at the new IMAP settings and confirm the old messages are there.
3. Run the second imapsync pass right before you change DNS, so nothing sent during the sync window is missed.
4. Update your domain's MX records to point at Flashcloud. If your domain's DNS is already managed through our portal, this is a change on the domain's DNS subpage; if it's elsewhere, update MX with your current DNS provider.
5. Wait for propagation. MX changes typically take effect within a few hours, though full global propagation can take up to 24-48 hours depending on old TTL values.
6. Run one more imapsync pass a day after cutover to catch any mail that arrived at the old server during propagation, if your old host is still reachable.

Don't cancel or disable the old mailboxes until you've confirmed mail is landing reliably on the new server for several days. Overlap costs nothing and gives you a safety net if something was missed.

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC after cutover

SPF and DKIM are configured automatically for domains hosted with us, so outgoing mail authenticates correctly once MX and the domain are pointed here. DMARC is not automatic: if your old provider had a DMARC record referencing their infrastructure, review and update it yourself so it reflects your new setup.

Backing up before and after

Before you decommission anything on the old side, it's worth having your own copy of the mail independent of both providers. See Backing up your email for options like local IMAP mirroring or a full export, any of which you can run against either the old or the new mailbox.

When to get help

If you'd rather skip the manual sync entirely, open a Free Transfer request from the portal instead. A migration specialist handles files, databases, DNS, and email as one job, typically in 2-5 business days, and your old site and mailboxes stay live the whole time. If you're partway through a manual sync and hit something odd, like messages not appearing in the right folders or authentication failing partway through, open a ticket from Support in the portal and describe what you ran; a real person will look at it.