Moving your website to a new host shouldn't touch your email. When it does, it's usually for one of two reasons, and you can check for both before you start.
Why email breaks
Your website and your email are separate services that happen to share a web address. A small set of settings, called DNS records, tells the internet where each one lives. One record points visitors to your website. Others, called MX records, point incoming email to your mailboxes.
Email breaks during a move when:
- those settings are changed or lost in the move, so email has nowhere to go, or
- your mailboxes were part of the old hosting package, and the old hosting gets cancelled.
1. Find where your email lives
Open an email you've sent and look at how you log in to read it. If you use Outlook with a Microsoft 365 subscription, or Gmail through Google Workspace, your email lives with Microsoft or Google. Moving your website won't affect it, as long as the DNS settings are kept (step 3).
If you log in to webmail through your hosting company, or your invoice lists mailboxes as part of the hosting, your email lives on the old server. That needs planning, because the mailboxes have to move too, or move somewhere else first.
2. Find where your DNS is
Your DNS settings are managed in one place, usually by your domain registrar or your hosting company. If it's your hosting company, moving away from them means moving your DNS too, and that's where records go missing.
If you're not sure where yours is, a free "DNS lookup" or "nameserver lookup" tool online will show it. The nameservers usually carry the company's name.
3. Copy every DNS record
Before anything changes, take a copy of every DNS record you have, including the ones that aren't for the website. The ones that matter for email are:
- MX records, which say where incoming email goes
- TXT records for SPF and DKIM, which stop your sent email landing in spam
- CNAME records such as "autodiscover", which help Outlook find your mailbox
If your DNS has to move, recreate every one of these at the new place before you switch.
4. Change only what you need
To move a website, you usually only need to change the record that points to the website, often called the "A record". Leave the MX and email records exactly as they are. If your DNS can stay where it is, that's the safest option.
Changes can take a few hours to reach everyone. Making the switch at a quiet time, like an evening or a weekend, means anyone affected is less likely to notice.
5. Don't cancel too soon
Keep your old hosting running until you've checked that the website works at the new host, and that you can send and receive email. Send a test email to yourself from a personal account, and reply to it.
If your mailboxes were on the old hosting, make sure their contents have been copied across before you cancel. Once an account is closed, the email in it usually goes with it.