Moving your website or your email to a new provider is routine work and usually goes without incident. When it does go wrong, it almost always goes wrong the same way, and it is worth knowing what that way is before you sign anything.
The mistake that costs people mail
Somebody cancels the old service before the new one is actually receiving.
It is an easy trap. The new provider is set up, everything looks ready, and there is a bill sitting there for a service you are about to stop using — so you cancel it. But mail is not switched over by a single decision. It moves as the change spreads across the internet, and for a period some messages still arrive at the old provider. If the old mailbox has been closed, those messages do not queue and they do not follow you. They bounce, or they vanish. Nobody tells you which customer's enquiry was in that gap.
The other version of the same mistake is deleting the old mailboxes once the new ones are working, before checking that all the historical mail actually copied across. Years of correspondence can go with them.
The rule: never cancel or delete anything until the new service has been receiving reliably for a decent period and the old data has been verified. Paying for one month of overlap is the cheapest insurance in this whole process.
The safe order of operations
At a high level, a migration we run looks like this:
- Work out what actually exists. Every mailbox, every shared or generic address such as accounts@ or info@, every forwarding rule, every alias, every distribution list, plus every other system that sends mail as your business. This step catches the surprises, and there are always one or two.
- Set the new service up completely, alongside the old one. Nothing is switched, nothing is cancelled. Both exist.
- Copy the historical mail across first — messages, folders, calendars and contacts — while the old service is still live and still receiving. This takes as long as the volume dictates, and it is much easier when nothing is under time pressure.
- Test the new service properly before it goes anywhere near live. Send and receive from outside, check the shared addresses, check anything that sends automatically.
- Change the pointers, usually at a quiet time. This is the moment of actual switch-over. It is not instant everywhere — the change takes time to spread, which is exactly why the old service must stay open.
- Run a catch-up pass. Anything that landed at the old provider during the transition is collected and moved across so the new mailboxes are complete.
- Fix the sending records. SPF, DKIM and DMARC — the settings that prove your mail is really yours — have to be updated for the new provider, or your outgoing mail starts landing in junk a week after everyone thought the job was finished.
- Watch for a period, then and only then cancel the old service, once you have confirmed nothing is still arriving there and the historical mail is verified.
What we need from you
The parts we cannot do without you:
- Access to the domain registrar account — the account where your domain name is managed. This is the one hard requirement. If nobody in the business knows where the domain lives or who controls it, finding out is the first job, and it can take longer than the migration itself.
- A complete list of mailboxes and addresses, including the ones nobody uses much. The forgotten info@ address that quietly feeds the website contact form is a classic.
- A list of anything that sends email as your business: accounting software, quoting or job systems, booking systems, online store, mailing lists, alarm and monitoring systems, and printers or scanners that email documents. Each needs reconfiguring, and each is a source of silent failure if missed.
- Somewhere to send passwords securely, and one nominated person who can make decisions on the day.
- A sensible window. Not the week of end-of-financial-year, not the day before you go on leave, not during your busiest trading period.
- Patience with the overlap. Expect to pay for both services briefly. That is not waste, it is the safety margin.
What to expect on the day
Most people notice very little. Mail may pause briefly, and everyone will need to sign in again on computers and phones — that part is unavoidable and it is worth warning your team the day before so the help requests do not all arrive at once. Some people will see mail arriving in the old place for a short while, which is normal and expected rather than a fault.
Tell us before you commit to a new provider rather than after. A short conversation up front usually saves more than it costs, and occasionally it changes which provider makes sense for you.
Talk to us
To plan a move, or for a quote, email admin@yougrowit.com.au. If a migration is already under way and something has gone wrong, log a ticket at portal.yougrowit.com.au or email support@yougrowit.com.au. If mail has stopped arriving, call 03 9028 4358.
Support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm Melbourne time, excluding Victorian public holidays.