If you have opted to move your email account from Rackspace Email to Zoho Mail, this page will provide guidance to hopefully ease the transition.
During this process, you will experience brief downtime for your email account between the time I set up and connect the new account, and when you access it via the instructions below. However, all new incoming emails will be immediately routed to the new account and will be waiting for you there.
Step 1: Zoho Mail account setup
For the first step I will go ahead and set up your new Zoho Mail account and make all the necessary connections in your domain's DNS records.
* Note that while I'm setting up your account, you may receive some intro or welcome emails from Zoho Mail. YOU CAN IGNORE THOSE. If these emails instruct you to complete this or that, don't do it. I am completing all the setup steps for you.
Step 2: Is a migration necessary?
The next step is to determine if I need to perform a migration to move your email archives from Rackspace to Zoho.
• Do you currently use your Rackspace email account solely by logging in to the online webmail panel at email.widerangegalleries.com or mywebmail.mymailsrvr.com? If so, then YES, a migration is necessary.
• Otherwise if you use your Rackspace email account through a mail app on your computer/phone, such as Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, etc., do you have it connected with a POP or IMAP connection? If you use a POP connection, all your emails are already downloaded into your mail app and a migration is not necessary. If you use an IMAP connection, all your emails reside on the email server and a migration is necessary.
To summarize, if you use your email account via the online webmail panel, or through a mail app with an IMAP connection, then a migration will be necessary.
But if you use your email account through a mail app with a POP connection, a migration is not needed and you can ignore the next step.
Step 3: The migration
If we have determined in Step 2 that a migration is necessary, I will configure and begin the migration process. This is an automated procedure that copies all the emails from your current Inbox and Sent folders on Rackspace to the new Inbox and Sent folders in the new Zoho account. Depending on how large your email archives are, this can take hours.
Step 4: Log in to your new Zoho Mail account
Once I notify you that your Zoho Mail account is ready, you should log in to the online webmail panel here:
The username will be your website email address, and I will email or text you the new one-time password. When you first log in you will be prompted to create a new password. Be sure you remember your password!
You can also manage various user settings from the "My Profile" button near the upper right corner. From the "Settings" button you can configure various settings such as out-of-office autoresponders, incoming email filters, and more.
If you are content to use the email account solely through this online webmail panel, then you are done; otherwise if you prefer to connect the account to a mail app on your computer/phone, then continue to Step 5.
Step 5: Connect the Zoho Mail account in your email app
The best way to manage your email account is to connect it to an email application on your computer or phone, such as Apple Mail or Outlook. I highly recommend using an IMAP connection (not POP). IMAP is the modern protocol and has the major advantage of syncing your email folders between any of your devices. That means that you'll see all the same up-to-date inbox and sent emails no matter if you're using your desktop computer, laptop, or phone. Additionally, if/when you get a new computer or phone, it's just a matter of connecting the email account again and it will all automatically sync.
* IMPORTANT: If you have already been using your previous Rackspace email account in your email app, when you configure this new connection you must add a new IMAP account in your email app; you cannot just update the connection settings of an existing IMAP account in your email app.
Here are the IMAP connection settings to use. (You will need to repeat this setup on every device where you use an email app).
| Username: | your email address |
| Password: | your password (double check if it's correct by logging in to your webmail panel at https://mail.zoho.com/zm/) |
| Incoming Servername/Hostname: | imappro.zoho.com |
| Incoming Port: | 993 (IMAP) |
| Outgoing Servername/Hostname: | smtppro.zoho.com |
| Outgoing (SMTP) Port: | 465 |
| SSL | Always select the options to use secure SSL/TLS for both Incoming and Outgoing |
| Authentication | Always select Password authentication for both Incoming and Outgoing |
* If you enable multifactor authentication in your Zoho account, then in order to connect the account to a mail app on your device(s) you will need to generate an "application-specific" password in your Zoho account at My Account > Security > Application-Specific Passwords.
Step 6 (for previous POP connections): Copy your old emails to the new account
If you used your previous Rackspace email account in your email app with a POP connection, then at this point in the process you should have 2 accounts in your email app: the new Zoho Mail account with an IMAP connection, and the old Rackspace account with a POP connection.
Now you will want to copy your email archives from the old account into the new account. To do this, go into your old Inbox, select as many emails as you can and drag and drop them into the new account Inbox. Note that the copying isn't instant; it can take many minutes to copy and upload the emails depending on how many you're copying at once. So just be patient and let it slowly churn through the copying.
Then repeat this process with your Sent folder (copy the emails in your old Sent folder to the new Sent folder).
Once this is completed, all your old email archives will be copied into the new account and uploaded to the Zoho Mail server. You can then delete the old account from your mail app.
All done!
Hopefully if you've followed all these steps, everything went smoothly and your email account is working as expected.
If you have any questions please let me know.