Migrating emails is something a lot of people dread because they're used to dealing with complications and missing data. Some organizations have avoided it completely because of their reputation of being so difficult, even when migrating emails would be a better solution for their needs. But with the right email migration tool and by avoiding common complications and issues, migrating emails can be fast and simple.
Types of email migration services
Before choosing an email migration tool, it's important to know what kind of email migration service you need.
There are a few different types of email migration services. The most straightforward is moving users to a new platform. This is usually fairly simple. However, when you factor in business accounts that have a lot more features than just the emails themselves, things get more complicated. Business email accounts tend to be tied to more than simply emails. Calendars for instance, are often critical too, especially when used as a reminder for recurring meetings and upcoming client calls that have been scheduled out. Contacts are also important, especially when there isn't a robust CRM integrated.
However, all of these file types are slightly different, and not all email migration tools can move all of the different types and have them function as expected. Just moving "emails" might only include the messages themselves with some email migration services. That's a start, but there's a lot more that goes along with mailboxes if the plan is to continue or improve business as usual. For example, individual drives (OneDrive, personal Google Drives) often need to come along as well.
Depending on the specifics, collaboration history like Microsoft Teams can also be migrated with some tools, but often the message history will be limited and not all aspects will be migrated. Currently, Movebot can't migrate Teams and instead is optimizing for faster mailbox migrations. Use Movebot if the type of email migration services you need is moving emails, contacts, and calendars with a high degree of control and fast transfer speeds.
Movebot as an email migration tool
Although we've recently added support for mailbox migrations, we're already changing the traditional way to migrate emails.
How fast are email migrations?
Email migration performance varies widely depending on the specifics of the project. Typically, emails involve moving tons of very small files, which means they often take longer per GB to move than a file migration.
With some email migration tools, the time it takes to move a large organization is painfully slow. You might need to plan out the project months in advance because it can take a few months to move everything across. When speeds are that slow, it's almost worth taking another look to decide if the migration is worth it.
With Movebot, you can expect to move about 800 emails per minute. On average, this amounts to around 120GB per day in our experience. While it's not terabytes per day like with moving files, it's still significantly faster than other email migration tools. Plus, you can set up separate projects for moving elements like personal Google Drives to get those migrated much faster.
No complex licensing, no per-user pricing
Email migrations tend to have convoluted and complicated pricing structures, and it can be hard to figure out what you actually get. It's not uncommon for email migration tools to have multiple options that accomplish the same thing, or having to mix and match several licenses to get what you want.
If you're doing something simple like just wanting the emails moved, this might not be much of an issue. Buy a few user email licenses and be on your way. But when you have drives and calendars and shared drives that all need to be moved as part of the migration, it can get real complicated real fast.
For instance, some companies put a limit on how big a single user's drive can be on one license. Exceed that limit, and you need another license. This means you might need one license to move the emails, then three more of a different type to move the data. Multiply this across hundreds or thousands of users with different requirements and you'll practically need a mathematician to make sure you get it right. And without being able to easily figure out what kind of licenses you need, you won't have an accurate gauge of costs either, and could be off by hundreds of thousands of dollars if your estimates are wrong.
At Movebot, there are no complex licenses or pricing schemes to work through. You simply pay for the amount of data you move, and that's it. There are no licenses types to sort through or user fees; you pay the same rate whether you're moving files, emails, contacts, or calendars. In fact, we even go a step further by putting a cost cap per user. If a user has a mailbox over 10GB, you'll only pay for the first 10GB--any data beyond that will be no cost to migrate. This means that most you'll ever pay for a user is $7.50/GB, with much lower rates when you move more or pre-purchase data packs.
How to migrate email accounts with Movebot
Email migration is as easy as P-A-C when you use Movebot. Our three-step process of Plan, Advance, Cutover is short and simple. To migrate emails successfully, all you have to do is PAC!
If you're looking for more detailed insights into using Movebot as an email migration video, check out our webinar recording replay below.
Plan
Email files don't have the same kind of issues as moving files between storage platforms, so in most cases you can confidently skip the Discovery scan and go straight into migrating users. Concerns like illegal characters and file type conversion aren't problems in emails, and while you can still run a Discovery Scan for peace of mind, you're unlikely to find anything actionable.
Typically, we've found the best results for email migrations follow this simple Recent Mail Last strategy:
- Move emails over 3 months old. Start by migrating historical mail older than 3 months for all user inboxes. Once that's done, historical mail will be in the destination first. The reason for doing this is that it's unlikely that users will need to reply to emails over 90 days old, so they can be moved over as is without worrying about causing disruptions.
- Run Cutover Deltas. For a speedy cutover, run a partial delta transfer. We recommend migrating emails from the date of the the last delta sync you ran.
- Post-Cutover Delta. After you've brought everything over we recommend running a final, full delta (Note: this will still be only the historical data at this point). This will pick up anything that may have been missed in previous steps and resolve any errors.
If you have a more urgent migration and need to use the destination right away, you can start the opposite way and start with the last 6 months so users can start working in the destination as soon as possible. Once those have been moved, historical messages can still be brought in later while the new platform is being used without any issues.
Migrations are an excellent time to clean out inboxes, and Movebot can help there too. Only want old messages you're required to keep for compliance purposes? You can use Movebot's filtering at project setup to move only the messages you actually need. Start work in the new platform with a less cluttered inbox by using Movebot.
Advance
After you've gone through the project settings, it's time to Advance to migrating emails. (Note: If you want to move Contacts and Calendars, make sure to check the boxes during setup).
When the project is set up, you can start creating individual transfers. For emails, we'll generally see user-to-user mappings, which can be done directly in Movebot individually or in bulk. After setting up your transfers, you can start the migrations and move data into the new platform. You can run multiple transfers at once, giving you the option to choose specific users to move first instead of having to hit start and have everything move at once out of your control.
After you've moved over the accounts, you'll want to make sure to get the most recent emails for the Cutover stage.
Cutover
As soon as a transfer finished, Movebot will generate a post-transfer report that gives you stats about your transfer including the amount of time taken and how much data was moved. It also notes anything that failed to migrate across.
A few failures are normal, and you can move those and any new emails through Delta migrations. If you skipped messages as part of the Plan stage earlier, here is where you'll move those over as well.
Once you're ready to have users start using the source, you'll need to change the MX records to point to the new destination. For tenant to tenant migrations, you'll also need to remove the domain from the old tenant and apply it to the new one.
Finally, run another partial delta migration as a sanity check and to grab any last-minute emails that may have come through and to make sure nothing was missed.
Try a better email migration tool
Movebot is a better email migration tool, designed to streamline and simplify migrating emails, contacts, and calendars. All you have to do is is connect your platforms, then PAC and move your data. Fast and affordable, without the complexities.
Want to see for yourself why Movebot is the best email migration tool? Sign up for an account and you'll get 50GB for free, with no credit card or sales call required. Start moving data in minutes and register for an account now.
