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Transferring Email - Non-cPanel Web Hosts

We are typically able to transfer your emails from another host's cPanel account to your new HostGator account.

If you are transferring to HostGator from a non-cPanel account we cannot guarantee that we can transfer your email. However, we will certainly do our best.

Please submit a transfer form with as much information as you can provide.

Please provide us with the following information for each email account you wish to transfer:
  • Email address
  • Email password
  • The IP address of your IMAP server. (If your domain name still points to your old account we might be able to use the name of your IMAP server instead.)

Our Migrations department will be happy to check your circumstances to see if this is possible and to provide a quote if required.


Transferring Your Email Using FetchMail

Unfortunately Horde no longer offers the FetchMail function. This feature has been removed in the current cPanel version and all future releases.


Alternative Mail Transfer Method

Note: This method can transfer mail to your Optimized WordPress email accounts, even from cPanel!
Another possible way to transfer your mail would be to configure an email client such as Outlook Express to connect to both the old and new mail servers using IMAP.

The first step is to re-create the email boxes for your HostGator hosting package. Please use the appropriate article below for your hosting type:

Then you would want to configure your email client to connect to HostGator using IMAP (without removing the settings to read mail from your old host). While this next tutorial specifically shows how to configure Outlook Express using POP3, it still may be helpful because it talks a bit about IMAP and the differences between POP3 and IMAP. The procedure for configuring Outlook Express for one is very similar to the procedure for configuring the other:

After your mail client is configured for both HostGator mail and your old host, you can highlight the messages from your old account as needed, then drag them to your new account. To highlight multiple messages, click on the top message, then hold down the [Shift] key and click on the bottom message. Every message in between will be selected as well.

If you want to select multiple individual messages, hold down the [Control] key while selecting messages. When dragging messages to your new mailbox, hold down the [Control] key to copy messages instead of moving them. Please note that with this method, the messages may be marked as deleted at the old host when you move them.