How to switch from a free email provider to your own domain email

We see it all the time – business owners who have been using free email services like Gmail or Hotmail and want to start using their own domain name for email. 

While such a change is necessary for many reasons, many people are often unsure of how to make the change efficiently and with minimal disruption to their business emails.

In this article, we will show you how to switch from yourbusiness@gmail.com to you@yourbusiness.com with minimal hassle and pain.

Before you make the switch

Once you have decided it’s time to switch from a Gmail (or any other free email accounts) to your own domain, you will first need to register the domain name and signup for a web hosting account that comes with email hosting services.

This means, you need to make sure the web host you are signing up with allows you to create custom domain email accounts and lets you manage (including send and receive) emails.

But don’t cancel you old email address yet!

Before you go an cancel your old Gmail account, you will need to verify that your new domain email account is up and running. You can send test emails from and to your new domain email account. Remember, it typically takes 24 hours for new domains to be registered and propagate across the Internet.

Once you have verified that your domain email account is ready, you can then begin the transition process.

How to transfer email efficiently?

Here are things that you can do to ensure an efficient transfer.

1. Setup email forwarding from your old email account to your domain email account.

   Basically, you want to forward emails going to your old email account to your new domain email account. This way, all emails that are sent to your old address will be properly delivered to your Doteasy email server and you will no longer need to check you emails at your old provider.

   To setup email forwarding:

   a) Gmail – Set up automatic forwarding

   b) Yahoo – Automatically forward email with Yahoo Mail

   c) Hotmail/Outlook.com – Automatically forward my messages to another email account

   d) Comcast – Automatically forward email from Comcast

   e) iCloud Mail – Forward all messages automatically

2. Download your old emails.

   If you have a lot of email sitting in your Inbox and other folders at your old email account, you will want to download a copy of the emails to your Doteasy domain email account, though how you would actually do it depends on if your old email provider provides IMAP or POP access.

   If your old provider provides IMAP access, all you need to do is setup both your old email account and your new domain email account in an email client such as Outlook, Thunderbird or Mac Mail, and then drag and drop your email from your old folders to your new ones.

   If your old provider does not provide IMAP, but does provide POP access, then you can download your emails from your old provider on to your computer using POP and then if you like, copy it back to your new Doteasy domain email account using IMAP.

3. Let everyone know about your new domain email address.

   This includes sending an email to your customers and vendors about your change of email address, as well as updating all marketing materials such as business cards and website.

4. Use your new domain email address exclusively.

   You should use your new domain email address exclusively, but don’t delete your old email address just yet. In most  cases, there is no need to disable to delete your old email address at all. Simply let is sit idle and let the email forwarder redirect emails to your new domain email account.