Switch from G Suite back to inMotion email server

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I have been using G Suite to handle my email for about the last 10 years, and now they are switching to a paid subscription model. What is the best way to switch back to inMotion Hosting handling the email for my domain?

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anonymous
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Hello, and happy to help out with this! The process of switching from one email service to another is relatively straightforward: the main step is simply editing your DNS records to point to your InMotion Hosting server, rather than your G Suite account. Like any DNS change, this can take up to 24 hours to fully propagate, so be sure to have the old accounts up and active for a day or two before the switch, and confirm that the new accounts are receiving mail once you've carried this out, so that you don't lose any mail. Make sure you create equivalent email accounts on your InMotion Hosting Server before updating the DNS, so that the mail has somewhere to go. Also, see this article for a bit more on DNS mail records specifically, so you know what the default is.

In my experience, the only thing that you really need to plan ahead for in moving from G Suite to hosting your emails with InMotion Hosting is in deciding how to deal with the emails on your old G Suite accounts. There is no easy way to transfer all of those old emails over; the simplest method involves using an email client like Thunderbird to transfer emails between servers. That can be time consuming if you have a lot of emails, so be sure to plan ahead and double check to make sure everything transferred. Also, please be aware of any limitations on the size of email accounts before you transfer emails, as this varies from hosting plan to hosting plan. Hope that helps!

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anonymous
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Thanks so much for the information, Ronnie! I followed those guides to update the DNS settings (on inMotion and Cloudflare), but was still struggling - emails were not going through. 


In case anyone else has this problem, here were a couple of other changes I had to make:

Since I use Cloudflare, I found out that I had to turn off the "Proxy" setting for the A record for mail, and the MX record. [If you don't use Cloudflare, don't worry about this.]


I had to tweak one more setting on my inMotion account:

cPanel --> Email --> Email Routing. I had this set to "Remote Mail Exchanger." When I switched it to "Automatically Detect Configuration," the emails started to go through.

Hope this helps save people time!

Thanks for checking back in, and I apologize for not checking if you had Cloudflare or another CDN. Glad it all worked out, and thanks for adding those tips for setting this up with Cloudflare!

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Thanks so much for the information, Ronnie! I followed those guides to update the DNS settings (on inMotion and Cloudflare), but was still struggling - emails were not going through. 


In case anyone else has this problem, here were a couple of other changes I had to make:

Since I use Cloudflare, I found out that I had to turn off the "Proxy" setting for the A record for mail, and the MX record. [If you don't use Cloudflare, don't worry about this.]


I had to tweak one more setting on my inMotion account:

cPanel --> Email --> Email Routing. I had this set to "Remote Mail Exchanger." When I switched it to "Automatically Detect Configuration," the emails started to go through.

Hope this helps save people time!

Avatar
anonymous
  • Answer
  • Answered

Hello, and happy to help out with this! The process of switching from one email service to another is relatively straightforward: the main step is simply editing your DNS records to point to your InMotion Hosting server, rather than your G Suite account. Like any DNS change, this can take up to 24 hours to fully propagate, so be sure to have the old accounts up and active for a day or two before the switch, and confirm that the new accounts are receiving mail once you've carried this out, so that you don't lose any mail. Make sure you create equivalent email accounts on your InMotion Hosting Server before updating the DNS, so that the mail has somewhere to go. Also, see this article for a bit more on DNS mail records specifically, so you know what the default is.

In my experience, the only thing that you really need to plan ahead for in moving from G Suite to hosting your emails with InMotion Hosting is in deciding how to deal with the emails on your old G Suite accounts. There is no easy way to transfer all of those old emails over; the simplest method involves using an email client like Thunderbird to transfer emails between servers. That can be time consuming if you have a lot of emails, so be sure to plan ahead and double check to make sure everything transferred. Also, please be aware of any limitations on the size of email accounts before you transfer emails, as this varies from hosting plan to hosting plan. Hope that helps!