How to Change Hosts
Without Losing Emails
 When you change hosts you must make a change to your domain name
to point to your new host's name servers. While it's any easy step
generally, it does create a frustrating period of time called "propagation".
Propagation is the time it takes from when you make a change to
your domain name until the time it takes for the whole world to
see the change. This time usually spans anywhere from 24 to 72
hours.
Why? Well, really simply put - when you made that change, the place
you made the change at must tell thousands of other servers around
the world that the change has been made. Some servers request change
information every 12 hours, some not but every few days. So - DNS
servers use sort of a "virtual word-of-mouth" to update
one another, and it simply takes a day or so for the news to spread.
Is that basic enough for you?
During propagation there is a chance your emails will go to your
old host, or they may go to their new host, depending on whether
or not the sender's ISP's DNS is updated or not. You can't afford
to lose emails or even risk delayed replies, so what do you do?
Actually, it's quite easy.
Step 1. Setup Email Accounts With New Host
Go ahead and activate your new web
hosting plan, if you have not already. For this example, let's
assume you use the address sales@yourdomain.com as your email address.
Create a new email account on your new hosting account called sales@,
just like your old host.
Step 2: In Outlook Change Your Current Sales@ POP
In Outlook (or whatever your email application is) click to edit
the properties of your sales@ account. Most likely your POP and
SMTP settings are mail.yourdomain.com. Change your POP settings
to the IP address of your old hosting account. Don't
know that IP address? Just ping it.
Step 3: Create a New Duplicate Account In Outlook
In Outlook (or whatever program) create a new email account - this
will basically be a duplicate of your current sales@ account. Feel
free to go ahead and set your SMTP server still as mail.yourdomain.com
but set your POP to the IP address of your new hosting account.
If you are using MySiteSpace you can find this IP address in your
welcome email.
Step 4: Just Check Both Accounts for a Few Days
That's it - you now have 2 sales@ accounts, one that checks your
old hosting account and one that checks your new account. When you
click "Send / Receive" both account will automatically
be checked. You should only have to do this for a few days after
you initiate your domain name change and then can delete the sales@
account that checks the old host.
Step 5. Cancel Your Old Host
You may now cancel that old hosting account.
Learn More About Changing Hosts
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