How to change business email provider to Eg Google?

I have a business domain name www.{businessname}.co.uk and various email addresses of the (whatever)@{businessname}.co.uk variety. These were set up before I took over operations.

These are either accessed by webmail with a very clunky old looking website that doesn't look like it's been changed in years, or via IMAP and my default Windows 10 mail app throws a hissy fit every time I log in about how security certificates are invalid. I would also like to set up new addresses like feedback@etc.co.uk

I would like to change these to an alternative supplier possibly, like Google or Microsoft but preferably without incurring large costs. AFAIK we don't currently pay anything to our supplier. Need to keep the same email addresses and domain name though. Not sure where to start or how to do so.

I'm also worried about how long there is until the domain name needs renewing and am not sure how to check that. Last thing I need is for the domain name to be lapsed and snapped up by some Chinese parasite unless I buy it back.

Any advice where to start. I'm happy to send details via PM.

Who's hosting your email? First question.

And who actually owns the domain?

Secondly, you can do a whois look up to find out when the domain is going to expire. Use https://www.whois.com or if you have access to a *unix machine you can open a terminal and type whois blahblah.com in order to feel like a hacker in a Holywood movie.

http://whois.sc is much easier to use and find relevant info with and a hell of a lot less spammy

We have Gmail, but with our own domain at my work so it's definitely possible, but i don't know how/how much. But a quick Google says you can keep your email addresses and basically anything you want. Prices vary from €4/user/month it seems. Whether that's expensive or not depends on you of course.

Not sure name of company that hosts the mail, I'm not currently at work. Will check next time I'm there.

Domain is hosted by tsohost.com

My company owns the domain name and it is expires either August or September this year apparently, not sure if its set to renew automatically (expires 2017-08-09 according to that much less spammy second link).

Someone somewhere should have a username and password for the hosting control panel, and for tsohost (who might in fact be one and the same). This should really have been given to you when you took over the business, but I wouldn't be surprised if they forgot and the passwords have been lost in the midsts of time. Alternatively, there might be a company that did the website who might have all the hosting details.

If you know who's hosting those e-mails, you can ask them questions like "why are all your certificates out of date? Please fix it so that error goes away."

It would be best to resolve the current problems you're having with the e-mail server than transfer to another service. Transferring e-mails from one server to another is a fucking pain in the ass if you're not some kind of server guru, and when you're a business you really strongly want to avoid being without e-mails for a couple days, especially if everything anyone sends you during that time is completely lost, which is not an impossible outcome. Get someone to handle it for you if you really need to change.

Yikes I hadn't imagined there would be days of downtime. The emails currently only serve a few minor functions, there is an email address for the restaurant that receives our online reservations from our website and a lot of junk mail. If we were offline for a few days that might mean people arrive for a booking we don't know about which could be embarrassing, but other than that I'm not sure if we'd miss anything.

There is another business email that I have that is flooded with junk mail and I don't really use it at all.

One reason I wanted to switch to gmail is that I never see junk mail with Gmail, it has fantastic filters. I want to start promoting getting feedback from customers and the last thing I want is for someone to email me some feedback only for it to be lost in a flood of spam.

For all accounts etc business emails I've set all my suppliers currently to send stuff direct to my personal email address. My personal email may as well be a works email now, it doesn't really get used for anything else.

I didn't say there would be, I said that was one of the possible outcomes :o

Honestly, sounds like your best bit is to just forward e-mails from your businesses domain to your gmail account(s). You can tell gmail to check other accounts but I think (?) it only accepts POP. Or you can set up a forwarder on your e-mail server, once you get access to it. Then get a proper e-mail solution sorted later on, when it becomes more of a priority.

Or maybe g-mail business accounts offer a better solution, I wouldn't know about that.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Yikes I hadn't imagined there would be days of downtime. The emails currently only serve a few minor functions, there is an email address for the restaurant that receives our online reservations from our website and a lot of junk mail. If we were offline for a few days that might mean people arrive for a booking we don't know about which could be embarrassing, but other than that I'm not sure if we'd miss anything.

There is another business email that I have that is flooded with junk mail and I don't really use it at all.

One reason I wanted to switch to gmail is that I never see junk mail with Gmail, it has fantastic filters. I want to start promoting getting feedback from customers and the last thing I want is for someone to email me some feedback only for it to be lost in a flood of spam.

For all accounts etc business emails I've set all my suppliers currently to send stuff direct to my personal email address. My personal email may as well be a works email now, it doesn't really get used for anything else.

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We use Google for Business, and it is very good for the price. It should be noted while it costs $5.00/user/month, (international prices my vary, looks like Flixy suggested it might be €4) that is only per account that will actually be sending out mail. You can set up as many groups/forwarding addresses as you'd like. That means you can have an events@domain.com address or a feedback@domain.com address which get forwarded to randblade@domain.com for free. You get exceptional up time and reliability, great storage and better security than you are likely getting now - if that is a concern. It also shouldn't be too much trouble to switch over, and Google has fairly user friendly procedures for the switch. You will need access to your domain's DNS records, which sounds like may be a complicating factor for you. Although if you are the one footing the bill for your domain, there is likely a process to transfer the ownership over to you.

I believe there is even a tool to upload your existing Outlook .pst and it will harvest contacts, messages, and calendar entries from it, though it has been several years since we made the switch.

Just wanted to add we are also happy with Google for business, unlike some of our other IT systems. Plus Google docs can be very useful, though if course i don't know if that's useful for your company.