I have a domain www.247ithub.com hosted with XYZ Hosting company for donkey years now. I have one active pop account [kunal-old@247ithub.com] there which has close to 3000 mails!

Problem

I want to move my site from XYZ Hosting company to Dreamhost where i hold an account. Now thats simple download all files from XYZ Hosting company and upload it on Dreamhost. But What about my mails! I am planning to use the GMail hosted mail for my domain.

Solution

My first task was to find a good IMAP client. Asked around a bit and settled on Thunderbird. Why IMAP Client? Well it will allow you to drag and drop mails from one account to another and GMail supports IMAP!

I created an account to connect to my POP account [kunal-old@247ithub.com] and downloaded all mails. To be on the safer side i left a copy of all mails on the server.

I went to my control Panel in Dreamhost and added my domain there and also choose for the GMail hosted domain for the same.

I already have another domain on Dreamhost where i am using GMail. I created a temporary account there. Activated my IMAP for that account. [kunal-temp@someotherdomain.com]

I went back to Thunderbird and configured this new IMAP account [kunal-temp@someotherdomain.com]. Now i had two accounts in Thunderbird 1) POP account [kunal-old@247ithubcom] where i had downloaded my 3000 mails and another empty temporary IMAP account [kunal-temp@someotherdomain.com].

I Copied all my mails from my POP account [kunal-old@247ithubcom] to this new IMAP account [kunal-temp@someotherdomain.com]. Its simple Select all mails Right click->Copy to (or Move to) Target folder which will show you your new IMAP folders. Or you can Drag and Drop the mails also.

I went to Indialinks and changed my DNS to point to Dreamhost. Once it got changed I went and created my new email accounts on GMail [kunal-new@247ithubcom].

Now all i had to do was Create one more IMAP account [kunal-new@247ithubcom] in Thunderbird and Copy all the mails from my IMAP temporary account [kunal-temp@someotherdomain.com] to this new one [kunal-new@247ithubcom] and viola i was good to go!

Now i know that if you dont have any where to create a temporary account you can directly copy the mails [kunal-old@247ithubcom] in Thunderbird to this new IMAP [kunal-new@247ithubcom]

Synopsis

• Get Thunderbird [click to download]
• Configure and download POP mail from current server
• Change Name servers to point to New server
• Activate GMail hosted Domains [Clich to Activate GMail for your domain]
• Create your Email and Enable IMAP [settings-Forwarding and POP/IMAP]
• Configure Thunderbird for this new Email account
• Drag and Drop Mails from the POP Account in Thunderbird to the New IMAP account.
• Its Done. Login to Gmail and all your mails are there.

I hope you find this helpful. Took me a while to figure out.

Cheers!