Move your email to FiniteHost

This guide moves acme.in from another email provider (your registrar's mail, Google Workspace, Zoho, another host) to FiniteHost. The order matters: prepare first, switch DNS, then copy old mail. Done this way, no new message is lost and your team keeps working during the move.

Before you start#

• A list of every address on the domain that needs to keep working, for example info@, sales@, priya@.
• Access to the old mailboxes over IMAP (address, password and the old provider's IMAP server name). Some providers need IMAP switched on or an "app password" for this; check their help pages.
• Access to the domain's DNS (Email DNS records).
• Enough mailboxes and storage on your plan. Check each old mailbox's size; a mailbox bigger than your plan's quota (for example 2 GB on Starter) will not fit. See Limits and policies.

Step 1: Prepare at FiniteHost#

1. Create every mailbox in the panel under Email → Email accounts and store each password (Email accounts).
2. Sign in to webmail once with each mailbox to check it works.
3. Copy the domain's DNS values from the Mail DNS card (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC). The DKIM value appears a minute or two after the first mailbox is created.

Optional but useful: a day before the switch, lower the TTL of your existing MX record to 300 seconds (5 minutes) at your DNS provider, so the change takes effect quickly.

Step 2: Switch the DNS#

Do this at a quiet time, for example in the evening.

1. Replace the old MX records with the single FiniteHost MX record 10 mx1.finitehost.com.
2. Replace the SPF record with v=spf1 include:_spf.finitehost.com -all, or merge if you still send through another service.
3. Add the DKIM record fh1._domainkey and the DMARC record _dmarc.
4. Check with nslookup -type=mx acme.in 1.1.1.1 until it shows mx1.finitehost.com.

From now on new mail arrives at FiniteHost. For a few hours, some senders may still deliver to the old provider because they remember the old MX record. That is why you keep the old mailboxes for at least a week (Step 5).

Step 3: Point your devices at FiniteHost#

Update each phone and computer to the FiniteHost settings (server mail.finitehost.com, IMAP 993, SMTP 587, full address as user name). Remove the old account from the device, or keep it for a week so you can still see late arrivals. Guides: Mail app settings.

Step 4: Copy your old mail#

Choose one method.

Method A: Thunderbird (no technical skills needed)#

Thunderbird can hold the old and the new account side by side and copy folders between them on the servers.

1. Install Thunderbird and add the FiniteHost mailbox (Thunderbird guide).
2. Add the old mailbox as a second account with your old provider's IMAP settings.
3. Wait until Thunderbird has downloaded the old account's folder list. Click each old folder once so it loads.
4. In the old account, open Inbox, click a message, press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac) to select all.
5. Right-click → Copy To → priya@acme.in → Inbox. Thunderbird uploads the messages to FiniteHost. Large mailboxes take a while; the progress shows at the bottom.
6. Repeat for Sent and each of your own folders. To copy a whole folder with its subfolders, right-click it → Copy To → choose the FiniteHost account.
7. Open webmail and check the message counts in each folder.

Method B: imapsync (for IT staff, many mailboxes)#

imapsync is a widely used open-source command-line tool that copies a whole mailbox between two IMAP servers and can be run again safely to pick up new messages. Install it on your own computer or server, then run one command per mailbox:

imapsync \
  --host1 imap.oldprovider.example --user1 priya@acme.in --passfile1 old-pass.txt --ssl1 \
  --host2 mail.finitehost.com      --user2 priya@acme.in --passfile2 new-pass.txt --ssl2

• --passfile1 and --passfile2 read the passwords from files so they do not end up in your shell history. Delete the files when you are done.
• Replace imap.oldprovider.example with your old provider's IMAP server.
• Run it once after the DNS switch and once more a few days later; the second run copies only what is new.
• Keep it to a few mailboxes at a time. FiniteHost allows up to 20 IMAP connections per mailbox from one address.

Step 5: Finish#

1. After a week, check the old mailboxes one last time for late arrivals and copy them across.
2. Cancel the old email service, or remove the domain from it, so it does not keep accepting mail for your domain.
3. Update your website's contact details and any services that send you mail if their addresses changed.

Troubleshooting#

What's next#

• Keep your mail out of spam
• Limits and policies
• Webmail guide