How do I transfer my email account to Digital Ocean from Media Temple?

October 9, 2014 3.5k views
clem
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clem

I have been using Media Temple as a host and registrar. I plan to transfer the domain name (example.com) to another registrar (which does not do free mail hosting) and cancel my media temple account as i have signed up to Digital Ocean.

How can i still access my joe@example.com once i have delegated example.com to digital ocean?

Is there a seamless way to do this or should i do something like this...

1) backup my mail (what's the best way to do this?)
2) set up a mail server on my digital ocean vps (any recommendations?)
3) recreate the joe@example.com address on the mail server
4) import my old mail to the new joe@example.com address

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1 Answer
Sam P. October 9, 2014

How can i still access my joe@example.com once i have delegated example.com to digital ocean?

Yes. Assuming you keep the MX records in your DNS pointing to the media temple mail servers they will remain your mail servers. How quickly/if media temple will deactivate your email account is what you need to know.

Is there a seamless way to do this or should i do something like this...

Your way sounds pretty good. I do not know of a seamless way.

As for backing up your email I don't know how you can do this. I am assuming you do not have (ssh) access to the email server, so maybe there is an option in the webmail interface or maybe you could do this using a desktop mail client.

As for setting up a mail server you could either:

As for importing your old mail, that would depend on the setup.

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