Are You a Nonprofit Trying to Migrate Your Email?

No email migration can guarantee 100% data transfer. There is always a possibility of missing or incomplete data.

If you are planning to move your company's email from one provider to another, don't treat it as simply creating new email accounts and copying emails across. Email migration involves data, folders, attachments, sent emails, contacts, and sometimes years of business history. Even when the migration appears successful, it is important to verify that the old data is actually available in the new mailbox.

Here is the process we recommend.

Step 1: Get a New Domain

For example, if your existing email is: piyali@xyz.com you can purchase an additional domain such as: xyz.co.in

You can skip this step if you already have another domain that you want to use for the new email system.

Why use a new domain?

Using a new domain allows you to set up and test the new email system without immediately disturbing your existing email service. Once the migration is verified, you can decide what to do with the original domain

Step 2: Choose an Email Provider

Now you need an email provider for your new domain. If budget is not a major concern If you want a more established provider and also need cloud storage, you can consider:

• Google Workspace, which comes with Google Drive

• Microsoft 365, which comes with OneDrive

If budget is a concern

There are some lower-cost options. Option 1: Zoho Mail Zoho offers a Forever Free Plan for up to 5 users, subject to its current plan terms. You can check the current pricing and plan details here: https://www.zoho.com/en-in/mail/zohomail-pricing.html Look for the Forever Free Plan. Option 2: Tech for Social Good Email Hosting Tech for Social Good offers email hosting for ₹5,000 per year, with:

• 15 GB storage

• Unlimited domains

• Unlimited mail accounts
  

You can then create your new email accounts, for example: piyali@xyz.co.in To learn more about Tech for Social Good email hosting, contact us at info@techforsocialgood.com.

Step 3: Copy the Old Emails to the New Accounts

Now comes the most important part: migrating the existing emails. For example: Old: piyali@xyz.com New: piyali@xyz.co.in There are several ways to do this. Option 1: Manual migration You can add both email accounts to an email client such as Outlook and copy the emails from the old mailbox to the new mailbox. You can then upload the emails into the new account. However, there is a problem with this approach. If something goes wrong and you have to upload the same emails again, you may end up with duplicate emails. For example, the same email could appear twice in the new mailbox. Option 2: Use an IMAP migration tool

We recommend considering imapsync, a tool specifically designed for synchronising email accounts over IMAP. https://imapsync.lamiral.info/ One of its advantages is that it can identify emails that have already been transferred, reducing the risk of copying the same email multiple times. However, even when using a migration tool, do not assume that the migration is automatically 100% complete.

Step 4: Ask Every User to Verify Their Old Emails

This step is often ignored — and it shouldn't be. After the migration, every user should check their new mailbox and confirm that their old emails are available. If you are the IT team handling the migration, we recommend getting a confirmation from each user.

For example, ask the user to:

1. Open their new mailbox.

2. Check at least 25 old emails.

3. Check emails from different dates.

   1. Check emails with attachments.

4. Check important folders such as Sent, Inbox and any custom folders.

5. Confirm that the old emails can be found in the new account.
   

Then get a written confirmation from the user that they have checked the mailbox and the old emails they expected to find are available. Why is this important? If a company has 10–50 email accounts, the IT team cannot realistically check every email in every mailbox. A migration may transfer thousands or even hundreds of thousands of emails. The IT team can perform technical checks, but the user is often the person who knows which emails are important and which historical conversations they need. A user confirmation therefore creates a clear record that the mailbox was checked after migration.

Step 5: Check Other Data Before Moving the Domain

Once the emails have been copied and verified, don't move the original domain yet. First, check what else is connected to your old email account. For example:

• Calendar — Check whether there are important past or upcoming calendar events that need to be migrated.

• Cloud storage — If your old email provider included storage such as Google Drive or OneDrive, check whether the user has files that need to be copied to the new account.

• Contacts — Check whether important business contacts are stored in the old account.

• Other data — Depending on the provider, there may be additional services or data connected to the old account.

This is especially important if you are moving from a provider that includes a complete productivity suite with the email account. For example, if you are moving away from Google Workspace, don't just migrate Gmail. Check Google Drive, Calendar, Contacts and other important data before you shut down or move the old account. Likewise, if you are moving away from Microsoft 365, check OneDrive, Outlook Calendar, Contacts and other connected services. Don't forget shared files Also check whether the user's old account owns files or folders that are shared with other people. Simply copying the files to a new account may not automatically preserve the same ownership, sharing permissions or links. Only after you have checked and copied all the data you need should you move to the next step: changing the domain or setting up forwarding

Step 6: Decide What to Do With the Original Domain

Once the migration is complete and users have verified their data, you have two main choices. Option 1: Move the original domain You can move the original domain, xyz.com, to the new email provider. You can then continue using: piyali@xyz.com with the new provider. This is useful if you want to keep the original email addresses. Option 2: Keep the new domain and forward the old emails Alternatively, you can keep using: piyali@xyz.co.in and configure the original email address to forward incoming emails to the new address. For example: piyali@xyz.com → piyali@xyz.co.in This gives people time to get used to your new email address. You can also configure an automatic reply informing senders that your email address has changed. Over time, customers, vendors and other contacts will start using the new address directly.

One Important Lesson From 16+ Years of IT Work

I have been involved in email migrations multiple times over my 16+ years of work experience. The biggest lesson is simple: Don't consider an email migration complete just because the migration tool says it is complete. The technical migration and the business verification are two different things. Your migration team can confirm that the migration process ran successfully. But only the users can confirm that the emails they actually need are available. So if you are migrating email for your company: Migrate → Verify → Get user confirmation → Then switch over completely. That extra verification step can save you a lot of trouble later