The Migration Process Explained

Moving your email from one server to another is more complex than it may appear on the surface. There are three distint stages involved:

  • Investigation,
  • Server setup,
  • Client setup.

Stage 1 - Investigation

At this point, we will identify the affected address(es) under your domain and look for any potential problems.

Many domains have legacy settings that must be rectified before proceeding. There may be outdated addresses that are no longer needed and are merely collecting spam for you. We'll also look for a wildcard (or catchall) on your domain. In the past, using a wildcard allowed you to gather all email received to your domain. However, things have changed, and this is no longer regarded best practise, or even a good idea.

Similarly, forwarding your domain email to another account should be done with caution. Mail forwarding is available, but it is discouraged as it complicates and affects deliverability.

Finally, we will discuss other potential factors that you may encounter, such as your website or workplace scanners.

Stage 2 - Server setup

This phase is generally transparent to you. Prior to the final step, we will perform DNS adjustments, set up your mail accounts on their new server, and configure mail routes to guarantee your inbound and outgoing messages flow appropriately. We may need your assistance in adding and modifying DNS records depending on your DNS hosting.

During this stage, you will begin to get quarantine notifications as the filters begin to detect and reject SPAM and other unwelcome emails. More information is available at Managing your Quarantine.

This process may take several days to complete depending on the intricacy of your domain. When we are finished, we will email you instructions on how to access your domain management interface.

Stage 3 - Client setup

At this point, most of the changes we can make have been completed and the setup of your email clients is all that is left.

This will require you to change or replace the mail account in each of your devices, your computers, phones, tablets and so on. You will be able to stage them updating one account at a time however if you have multple devices checking a single account, they will all need to be done at one time. The details that change for your account are the server names (incoming and outgoing), the username (now your email address) and the password.

Server names

Your incoming and outgoing mail servers will nearly always be mail.your.domain.name. If your domain is example.com.au, your server's address becomes mail.example.com.au.

There are certain exceptions to this, but we will have informed you of what should be used ahead of time.

Username

Our legacy mailboxes had a defined username, such as cns54321 or mbx65432, and so on. These are no longer valid and will no longer function.

You will instead use your email address. If you had more than one address (billy@example.com.au and info@example.com.au), we would have identified what you consider the primary address during the Investigation phase. Going forward, you will only use your primary email address as your username.

Password

We no longer create passwords for you. We create a policy defining what makes an acceptable secure password, but the ability to set a password is entirely yours as long as it complies with the policy. The previously mentioned domain management interface is used to establish your account's password.

It is also vital to know that we do not have your password and cannot retrieve it. If you lose it, you may reset it, but keep in mind that this will affect all devices that use this account.

You might think about using a safe password manager.

The changes required will vary depending on what you have setup now and what change (if any) is desired at the end.

Care should be taken to ensure your local mail is maintained. If you are unsure or concerned, you should check first.

At it's simplest, if you are using POP3 on mail.iig.com.au now, you may simply change the settings in your email client's account profile.

If you are using an IMAP account now, may be able to change the settings but be aware, this does not move your mail automatically. You should export your mail before changing the account so you can re-import it. Alternatively, you can ask us to mirgrate the mail from your old mailbox to the new.

If you are changing from POP3 to IMAP or vise versa, you will need to remove the account profile and recreate it. Be sure you have retained a copy of your email before removing the account.

You can consult our manual setup page for the specific ports and SSL settings. Additionally, there are guides for specific email applications here.