Changing web hosting companies - HOWTO

5. Configure your email program to check email messages at both places
First you need to backup all email messages Backing up your email correspondence is an important stage of the process as some email message might be vital for your business, so you should be careful here. If you are using some email program like MS Outlook to read your email messages over POP, there is nothing to worry about. You already have your email messages downloaded to your computer. However if you are using IMAP to read your email messages or if you are using some Webmail program provided by your web hosting company, most probably most of your email correspondence is stored on the web hosting server. So you need to download these messages to your local computer. If you are using IMAP, create folders on your local computer and then copy (or move) all the messages from the old hosting server to these local folders in your email program.

You can also move the messages directly from the old hosting server to the new one. To be able to do that, you need first to recreate the mailboxes at your domain name at the new hosting server. Then configure two accounts in your email program. The one should check the email at the old hosting server, while the other one will check for messages on the new web hosting server. You may need to consult both of your web hosting providers if you are able to check your email messages using the name of the hosting server or some IP address, the same way as for testing your site. Usually you will be able to do so. So in both cases configure these two email accounts to use as Incoming server, the IP address or the server name provided by each hosting company. Once you have that setup ready in your email program you can start moving your messages to the new server simply by drag-n-drop them at the new place. Please note that the mailboxes must be configured as IMAP ones.

Once you have moved all the messages to the new server, you can proceed with the next step of the process. For now leave the two mailboxes as they are in your email program. You will need that setup for a couple of days.