Hi again,
I am changing hosts but I want to keep all of my site's current email accounts without losing any mail/data. How do I go about it?

What control panel(s) are used on the hosts?

If they both use the same panel then doing a mail (or full) backup at the old host and restoring at the new one should do the trick unless one of them has a non-standard mail setup.

Actually my existing host (Micfo) uses Fantastico while the new host (godaddy) has its own control panel.

Use POP3 with an email client (like Outlook) and download all your messages to your local machine (and delete them off the server).

Fantastico and godaddy are not compatible, so you'll have to do a local backup (as I described above).

If both hosts support IMAP you could use something like imapsync (http://freshmeat.net/projects/imapsync/). When I used it (about two years ago) there was an issue with the mail setups I was transfering between handling folders slightly differently though IIRC that was easy to fix up afterwards.

If you have SSH access on one of the hosts, run the tool there rather than on your home/work machien as transfering the mail directly from host to host will be much faster than is having to transfer them to via another machine.

You'll have to do each account individually which could be a pain if there are many, but you are unliokely to be able to avoid that if the backup+restore option isn't available.

I am not too familiar with the use and installation of that program. Is there another way?

No, I don't think there is. I didn't think of the IMAP option, but that's a great suggestion. I do not know if godaddy even provides shell access on their accounts.

The easiest way would be to transfer to a host that has cpanel, and then just do a direct cpanel to cpanel backup, this way everything emails, databases, passwords, etc. are transferred.

I am not too familiar with the use and installation of that program. Is there another way?

I don't know of any other tools specifically designed for this task, unfortunately.

You could try find a desktop IMAP client that supports accessing multiple accounts from the same instance, and see if it can transfer messages from folders on the one account to folders on the other. I tend to use webmail clients so don't have enough experience with modern desktop clients to be able to recommend one to you.

It might also be worth asking the host you are moving too - they may have experience of having new clients wanting to transfer mail from an old host and so may be able to recommend a tool that you can use (or may even be willing to try do the transfer for you, though this is unlikely).

Thunderbird works well for a task like this (even while dns is moving)

1. Setup you old account using ip address (or mail.webhost.com)
2. Setup your new account (using imap) (depending on dns, either use youdomain.com or ip address again)
3. Select all you messages (Control A)
4. Right click "copy" - to the new location eg. oldhost --> newhost
5. Sit back and wait, thunderbird can be a little touchy at times.
6. Make sure dns has resolved then remove old account (at least 1 day, better to wait to for any cached address)

If you get stuck just give us a yell, I might be able to help you out further.

BJ

EDIT:

Inbox, Trash, Sent Item, Any other folders can be done like this.

Sent Items can be a pain, send an email to yourself and it will create the folder.

Thanks a lot guys. I hope that I don't sound lazy but I had already spent a considerable amount of time tranfering databases so I decided to take the easy way out and advise my users that their email accounts will be lost because of the transfer.

I have taken note of what has been described however, and will definitely use it in the future.

I have a another question though. I've set the DNS to godaddy at my registrar (namecheap). Will I have to adjust the MX entries or will everything sort itself out when the dns change has been propogated on the web?

I ask because, though I transferred the domain, when I log back into my micfo account I am still receiving mail while I can't yet establish email accounts at godaddy under the transferred domain name. (N.B. The domain name already points to the site as hosted on godaddy.)
Again this is my first time so I really need your help to understand this.

No, you don't have to change the mx records. After some time (generally 2 days), your records will have transferred.

I can share one experience, one of my clients requested to change his web space from windows to Linux. I allotted him the space and transferred his all files in Linux. He was using outlook so there was no issue of email transfer. He changed the DNS record from registrar’S control panel. I noticed his old space kept on getting some emails ( not all ) next 2 days. Some emails landed in old web space and some in new space at the same period of time.

Because there is multiple copy of DNS records in every region, and each gets updated in variable interval, it is possible that email sent from different corner of the world will be given different IP address (by nearest DNS server).

So don’t delete your client’s account from old server for at least another one week and give him IP based access to old cornel panel so that they can check emails through webmail.

Thanks