Migrate Your Email to KapsuleHost (Self-Serve Wizard)
Move mailboxes from Gmail, Microsoft 365, iCloud or any IMAP host into KapsuleHost yourself, with a live progress monitor and without taking your email offline.
What This Wizard Does
The email migration wizard in KPanel copies every folder and message from your current mailbox into a new KapsuleHost mailbox, keeping each message's read and flagged state and its original date. You watch progress per mailbox on a live monitor, and you switch your MX records when you are ready.
Your current provider can be anything that speaks IMAP:
- Google Workspace or Gmail, with an app password
- Microsoft 365 or Outlook, with an app password and IMAP turned on for your organisation
- Apple iCloud, with an app-specific password
- Yahoo, Zoho, Fastmail, a cPanel host, or any other standard IMAP server
Before You Start
- Add your domain to your KapsuleHost account and verify it. The wizard does not start a migration onto a domain that is not verified. See Adding and Connecting Your Domain.
- Check that you have room on your plan. The wizard counts the mailboxes you are adding against your plan's mailbox allowance and tells you if you are over.
- Create an app password at your current provider for each mailbox. The wizard shows you the steps for your provider.
Step by Step
1. Choose Email
Go to Migrations in KPanel, start a new migration and choose the email option.
2. Enter Your Domain
Enter the domain whose email you are moving, for example example.com. We look up its MX records to work out who you are moving from, and we pick that provider for you on the next step.
3. Connect to Your Current Host
Pick your provider. The wizard shows the exact steps to create an app password there, with a link to the right settings page. For Google Workspace:
- Sign in to your Google Account at myaccount.google.com.
- Open Security, then 2-Step Verification (you must have it on).
- Scroll to the bottom and open App passwords.
- Create one called KapsuleHost Migration.
- Copy the 16-character password Google shows you.
For a provider that is not on the list, you enter the IMAP host yourself, normally port 993 with TLS.
4. Add Your Mailboxes
One row per mailbox:
- Source address, the address at your old host
- Destination on KapsuleHost, usually the same address, though you can change the part before the @
- Source password / app password, the password you just created
Press Test connection on each row. We sign in to your old host and show how many folders and messages we found. Use Add another mailbox for each extra mailbox.
5. Choose How the MX Switch Happens
- I'll change my domain's mail setting myself. The wizard recommends it. When the copy finishes, the monitor shows you the record to add at your DNS host, checks it for you, and you press finish.
- Change it for me. Offered when your domain is on your KapsuleHost account and uses Kapsule DNS. The moment the initial copy finishes, we point the MX at KapsuleHost and remove the records pointing at your old provider. Your SPF is added to rather than replaced, your DMARC is left as it is, and your website records are not changed. If the wizard cannot confirm that your domain qualifies, it tells you why and you choose the first option instead.
6. Launch
Review the summary and launch. We create your destination mailboxes on KapsuleHost, start copying in the background, and take you to the live monitor.
The Live Monitor
The monitor shows:
- A progress row per mailbox, with the folders, messages and data copied so far
- A status per mailbox: "Waiting for sign-in", "Starting", "Copying", "Catching up", "Done", "Partial", "Failed" or "Skipped"
- A banner for the whole run: Copying messages, then Your mail is copied. One step left: point your MX record at KapsuleHost, then Copying the last new messages, then Migration complete
You can leave the page and come back at any time. The copy runs on our side whether the page is open or not.
Switching Your MX
If you chose Change it for me, we switch the MX ourselves as soon as the copy finishes, and you have nothing to do. If we cannot (for example, because the domain has moved off Kapsule DNS since you launched), the monitor tells you why, nothing about your mail has changed, and you can ask us to try again or add the record yourself.
If you are switching it yourself, the monitor shows the MX record to add, with a copy button: priority 10, pointing at mail.kapsulehost.com. Add it at your DNS host and delete every other MX record for the domain. If your DNS provider supports our one-click email setup, the monitor also offers a button that makes the change there once you approve it.
The What your DNS says right now panel asks your domain's own nameservers which MX records they publish, and marks each one as KapsuleHost or not. Press Check again after each change. When it says every MX record points at KapsuleHost, press I've changed my MX record, finish the migration.
We check again before we finish, and we go ahead only when every MX record is ours. Otherwise we stop and name the case you are in: other MX records are still published beside ours, your MX does not point at KapsuleHost yet, there is no MX record at all, or we could not get an answer from your nameservers (a failed lookup on our side, not a sign that your records are wrong). Fix the records and check again, or choose Finish anyway. If you finish anyway, mail that still reaches your old provider after the migration completes stays there.
Nothing Is Lost When You Switch
A changed MX record does not reach every sender at once: a mail server that looked up your domain before the change can keep delivering to your old provider for a while. So after the switch we keep collecting. For 24 hours the run shows Copying the last new messages, and every 30 minutes we check your old mailbox and copy anything new that landed there. The monitor shows the time collecting stops. Then one last pass runs, the migration is marked complete, and we email you. You do not need to do anything.
If a Mailbox Fails
The copy is resumable. Every folder is checkpointed as it copies, so a network blip or a restart picks up where it stopped instead of fetching everything again.
If one mailbox fails, it shows as Failed on the monitor with the reason, and the other mailboxes carry on copying. When the run ends, Start this migration again brings your domain, source server and mailbox list into a new run. You enter each source password again, mailboxes that copied in full are left out, and each mailbox picks up where it stopped.
Security and Credentials
- Source passwords are encrypted at rest with AES-256.
- They are kept only while the migration needs them: for the copy, and for the 24 hours of collecting after the switch. They are wiped the moment the migration completes, fails or is cancelled.
- We never log the contents of your messages.
- We never write to your old mailbox. The migration only reads from it.
Common Questions
Will my old mailbox stop working? No. It keeps receiving mail until you switch your MX, and nothing bounces while we copy. After the switch we keep collecting from it for 24 hours. Keep it open for a few weeks afterwards anyway: it costs little and it is the cheapest insurance there is.
How long does it take? It depends on how much mail there is and how fast your old host answers. The connection test in step 4 shows how many messages each mailbox holds, which tells you roughly what to expect. Large mailboxes take hours, not minutes.
Can I move contacts and calendars? Contacts, yes, where your old host runs a contacts server that accepts the same mailbox password. Gmail and Microsoft 365 keep contacts behind a Google or Microsoft sign-in, so contacts do not come across from those two yet, and the monitor says so. Calendars are not moved.
What about Gmail's All Mail folder? We skip it. It holds a copy of every message in your other folders, so you get the same mail through your Inbox, Sent and labels.
Do I need an account first? Yes. The wizard runs inside KPanel, so sign up, add your domain, then start the migration.