A free email service like Gmail is still a preferred free email service among users. However, when you start up your website, you would then need a domain-based or custom email address that gives a more professional touch to it. A cPanel-based web hosting consumers often need to switch from hosting to hosting for business needs or various reasons. In such cases, you may want to migrate the email accounts from one hosting to another. You don’t always have migration expertise in your team, for all of such, Techdecipher brings you how to migrate cPanel emails manually.
In today’s post, we are going to check what is cPanel email, why cPanel emails are not meant for business, and how to migrate and restore cPanel emails. Without further due, let’s get the task done!
What is cPanel email?
cPanel is a famous control panel that helps you manage your hosting account and has several features. cPanel emails are one such feature that allows you to create domain-based emails that are hosted in your control panel. You can send emails from the webmail within the control panel or you can use any email clients to configure the created emails on it. The cPanel emails is a very flexible email utility, you get some of the important email functions like email forwards and set the storage to it under one roof. cPanel email comes as a free feature in cPanel-based hosting plans. You really don’t need to spend some extra bucks for a domain-based email subscription but it does have some restrictive nature, lets cover that below.
Why cPanel emails are not meant for business?
cPanel emails are probably a sweet and cheap solution for so many cPanel-based hosting users. The cost is the primary reason why it is a very preferred utility. However, this may sound unacceptable but cPanel emails are never meant for business purposes. The use of cPanel emails was to communicate between different services within the server. Most of these services are in the form of notifications so the server admin knows what’s happening.
This way the server has understanding and has logged the information. Apart from this function, cPanel emails do not always have a higher email delivery rate. By saying higher email deliverability we mean the system’s ability to send the email and it reaches the destination. When you sign up for a dedicated email service like Office 365 domain-based email solution or others, you get 2 things.
One is that it comes at a cost, and the second is that you get higher email deliverability. In contrast to that, when you use cPanel emails and expect that they would work like other prominent email service providers, you might be disappointed. But, ideally for any venture cPanel emails would be a great option. We included this information so you know how these things are actually. But worry not, if your niche does not require too much interaction with users, you are fine to use cPanel emails.
How to migrate and restore cPanel emails?
1) Verify the email accounts you wish to migrate.
First of all, you need to verify which emails you are going to migrate from one cpanel hosting to the other. For this, login to your cPanel admin and navigate to the email account section to check the list of email accounts. Note the email account usernames as well in a sticky note or notepad because that is what we would need in the next step.
2) Navigate to the mail folder in File Manager.
Now go to the File Manager of your cPanel account and make sure all hidden files are listed. Sometimes the show hidden files may not be enabled and that is fine. To enable the show hidden file option tap on the settings button on the top right corner through your file manager, check mark show hidden files option, and click Save.
Post this, you will notice a lot more files and folders are showing. From this list, go to Mail folder > and tap on the domain-based email you wish to migrate. For example, the email address that we wish to migrate is admin@techdecipher.com. You then would choose the techdecipher.com folder from the mail folder.
3) Zip the respective email account.
now, you have to zip the concerned email account folder. I wanted to migrate admin@techdecipher.com so I would click on the admin folder. Under the mail folder, right-click on the respective email account folder, and tap on the compress option to compress it. After it gets compressed, you have to download the compressed email file to your local system.
4) Navigate to the Target hosting account.
Goto your target hosting account where you wish to migrate the email account. You would first want to create the email account where you wish to migrate those emails. If you have not created it already, navigate to cPanel Admin > email account> Create Email. Skip this step if you have already created the email.
5) Move out Existing content.
From this point on a target hosting, you would go to File Manager similar to step 2). From the file manager go to Mail > concerned domain > concerned email > and move existing material to another folder. We need to do this because we are overriding all content of existing emails with this new email account content which we are migrating. You would create an old folder and move all content to that folder.
6) Upload and Extract.
When the zip file is uploaded, you will extract the file. Right-click on the file and click on the extract option to unzip it. After unzipping make sure all the extracted files and folders are extracted to the path in the hierarchy as /mail/concerned-domain/concerned-email-folder/*all files. An Example would be as /mail/techdecipher.com/admin/all extracted files from the zipped file.
7) Make sure to verify.
Now go to the cPanel account on target hosting obviously. Email account > click on the check email > and follow along. You should see the list of emails, you can verify the email count there from the old hosting email account to the new email hosting account shared in the image. Bingo, that is how you migrated your email.
Conclusion
Migrating content between hosting plans sometimes becomes confusing. With the steps we have used, you do not lose any single data and the best way of migrating cPanel emails. We have also covered how to migrate a cPanel account which you can find from the links here. This concludes how to migrate cPanel emails manually. Did you feel stuck on any steps? do let us know in the comments section below. If you need any help or have any suggestions to make, then do reach us via the contact page here. Happy Batman Day!
