How to transfer email accounts between cPanel servers
- Open your preferred FTP client, connect to the hosting account where the email accounts/messages currently are and navigate to the etc/ sub folder. There you will see a folder named mydomain.com or the name of the domain you want to transfer the messages for. Download this folder anywhere to your local PC. This folder contains the email accounts associated with the corresponding domain.
- Now connect with your FTP client to the server where you want to transfer the accounts/messages. Navigate again to the etc/ sub folder and upload the previously downloaded mydomain.com folder. With this, the transfer of the email accounts is completed.
How to transfer email messages between cPanel servers
Simply repeat the previous process, but this time navigate to the mail/ sub folder of the account where the messages are stored, download mydomain.com to your local PC, connect to the other account where you want to transfer the messages and upload the folder mydomain.com to the mail/ sub folder of the destination account. With this, the transfer of your email accounts and messages is completed.
You will only need the cur and new subfolders for each email account.
What if I have already changed nameservers and I lost all my emails?
In this case:
- Create a new email account in Thunderbird.
- Give your old email and password.
- Make sure that you use the actual server email host name in inbox and outbox (not mail.mywebsite.com, but the actual one, like for example scirocco.websitewelcome.com). You can ask your old host about the actual mail server name. If you have access to the WHM of the server, you will find it on the top bar of it (under Hostname). Or you can use your server IP (just confirm security exception afterwards).
- Make sure that the new account that you setup is IMAP (so that you will get folders as well).
- Now drag and drop the emails you want (or folders) from your old email to the new one.
- When you are complete, delete the email from step 1.