Moving Your Email to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 Print

What this involves

You can host your website with us while running your email through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and many businesses do. It is a common and sensible setup: your site stays with us, your mailboxes live with Google or Microsoft, and the two are connected by your domain's DNS. This article explains what moving your email to one of those providers actually involves, so you know what to expect whether you do it yourself or have us handle it.

First, understand what stays and what changes

• Your website does not move. It stays hosted exactly where it is. This is purely about email.
• Your domain does not move. It keeps working as it does now, only its email records change.
• Your mailboxes change homes. Instead of living on our mail server, they move to Google's or Microsoft's, and you and your team use Gmail or Outlook to access them.

Two things make this work behind the scenes: your domain's DNS records are pointed at the new provider, and the email routing on our side is set so our server knows it is no longer responsible for your mail. The mechanics of both are covered in our companion article on the DNS and routing side.

The part that needs care: moving your existing mail

This is the step people underestimate. Pointing your domain at Google or Microsoft sets up email going forward, but it does not move the mail you already have. Your existing messages, contacts, and folders sitting in your current mailboxes need to be migrated across separately, or they stay behind.

• Set up the new mailboxes first, at Google or Microsoft, before changing anything, so there is somewhere for mail to land.
• Migrate your existing mail across if you need your history, both providers offer migration tools, and this is one of the fiddlier parts of the job.
• Only then switch the DNS, so new mail starts flowing to the new provider once everything is ready to receive it.
• Keep your old mailboxes intact until you are certain everything has moved and is working, exactly the caution our articles on migrations and nameserver changes stress. Do not delete the old mail until the new setup is proven.

Expect a transition window

When you change your domain's email records, the change spreads across the internet over a period, up to 48 hours, called propagation, covered in our article on email problems after a DNS change. During that window, some mail may still arrive at the old mailboxes while the rest of the world catches up, which is exactly why you keep the old mailboxes running until propagation is complete and you have checked nothing landed there. Plan the switch for a quieter period rather than the morning of a busy day.

Do it yourself, or let us handle it

Both are genuinely on the table.

• Yourself: Google and Microsoft both provide setup wizards and documentation, and the DNS and routing changes on our side are covered in our companion article. It is doable if you are comfortable following provider instructions carefully.
• With us: we set the whole thing up for you, the DNS records, the routing on our side, and the coordination so your mail keeps flowing through the switch. Given that a mistake here means email interruption, many clients would rather have it done right, and that is exactly what a support ticket gets you.

A note on the parked-domain option

You do not even need a hosting plan to run Workspace or 365 on a domain. If the domain exists mainly for professional email hosted elsewhere, our parking-with-redirect product carries the DNS records to run Google or Microsoft mail without a full hosting plan, as our article on domain parking explains. It is the purpose-built option for a domain that is really only there for its email.

Good to know

The golden rule of an email move is the same as any migration: set up the new home fully, move your existing mail across, prove it works, and only then switch over, keeping the old setup alive until you are sure. Rushed email moves are how messages get lost in the gap, and email is rarely something a business can afford to lose even briefly. Whether you do it yourself or hand it to us, give the move the care it deserves, and if you would rather not risk the coordination yourself, we will handle the whole thing.