Many businesses start with the email account that came free with their website hosting — cPanel email from providers like GoDaddy, Hostinger or BigRock. It works, until mailboxes fill up, spam gets through and staff want Outlook, Teams and shared calendars. Moving to Microsoft 365 fixes that. Here's how a migration from cPanel or hosting email works, step by step.
Before you start
- List every mailbox, alias and forwarder — for example info@, sales@ and accounts@.
- Check how much mail each mailbox holds. Large mailboxes take longer to copy.
- Make sure you can log in to your domain's DNS settings, at your domain registrar or hosting provider.
- Decide which Microsoft 365 plan each person needs.
Step by step
- Lower your DNS TTL. A day or two before, set a low TTL on your MX record so the switch-over takes effect quickly.
- Add and verify your domain in Microsoft 365 by adding the TXT record Microsoft gives you.
- Create users and shared mailboxes with the same addresses you use today, and recreate aliases and forwarders.
- Copy existing email. Microsoft 365 can pull mail from IMAP mailboxes such as cPanel in the background, while staff keep working on the old system.
- Switch the MX record to Microsoft 365 after office hours. New email now arrives in Microsoft 365.
- Run a final sync to copy any emails that reached the old server during the switch.
- Update SPF and turn on DKIM and DMARC so your emails are trusted and don't land in spam. We explain these in Why your business emails go to spam.
- Set up Outlook and phones for every user.
- Keep the old mailboxes for a few weeks as a safety net, then cancel them.
What moves — and what needs extra care
An IMAP migration moves email and folders. Contacts and calendars from hosting email usually need to be exported and imported separately. Emails saved only on a staff member's computer — for example in an old Outlook data file — must be uploaded too, so check for these before you start.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Switching the MX record before users and mailboxes are ready — emails bounce.
- Forgetting aliases and forwarders — messages to sales@ quietly disappear.
- Leaving the old SPF record in place — new mail from Microsoft 365 lands in spam.
- Cancelling the old hosting email too early.
- Switching in the middle of the working day.
How long does it take?
For a small office, planning and setup take a day or two. Copying mail runs in the background and depends on mailbox sizes. The actual switch-over happens after hours, so most teams see no interruption at all.
Prefer Gmail? The same approach works for Google Workspace — see Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace. Have lots of users? Consider your own mail server with unlimited mailboxes.
Frequently asked questions
Will we lose emails when moving to Microsoft 365?
Not if the migration is planned properly: mail is copied first, a final sync runs after the switch, and the old mailboxes are kept for a few weeks as a safety net.
Can we keep our website on the current hosting?
Yes. Only the email (the MX and related DNS records) moves to Microsoft 365. Your website can stay where it is.
Can we keep the same email addresses?
Yes. Your email addresses stay exactly the same — only the system behind them changes.
Want us to handle the move?
We migrate cPanel and hosting email to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace after office hours, at a fixed price per mailbox.