Hostinger Email Migration Guide 2026: Move Email Without Losing Data

Before migrating email to Hostinger:

• Set up your Hostinger email account and confirm webmail access works
• Note all email folders you need to migrate (Inbox, Sent, Archives, custom folders)
• Have IMAP credentials for your old email provider
• Decide if you want a cutover migration (switch at once) or parallel running (use both temporarily)
• Inform your team of the migration timeline to avoid confusion during transition

The simplest migration method for most users:

Step 1: In your email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail), add both your old account and your new Hostinger account via IMAP.

Step 2: Wait for both accounts to fully sync — all emails download to your local client from both accounts.

Step 3: Select all emails in each folder of the old account and drag them to the corresponding folder in the Hostinger account.

Step 4: Your email client uploads the messages to Hostinger via IMAP. Migration speed depends on connection and mailbox size.

This method works for mailboxes up to ~10GB. Larger mailboxes are better handled with dedicated tools.

For larger migrations (10GB+) or automated server-to-server transfers, imapsync is the standard open-source tool. It copies email between any two IMAP servers without requiring a local email client.

Basic imapsync command: imapsync --host1 imap.oldprovider.com --user1 old@domain.com --password1 'oldpass' --host2 imap.hostinger.com --user2 new@domain.com --password2 'newpass'

Run this from a server or your local machine. imapsync preserves folder structure, read/unread status, and timestamps. It can be run multiple times — only new or changed messages are synced on subsequent runs, making it ideal for staged migrations.

Once your historical email is migrated, update your MX records to start receiving new email on Hostinger:

• Add Hostinger MX records: mx1.hostinger.com (priority 10) and mx2.hostinger.com (priority 20)
• Remove old provider MX records
• Lower TTL to 300 seconds before the cutover to speed up propagation

MX changes propagate in 1-24 hours. During propagation, some email may still arrive at the old provider — run your migration tool one final time after propagation completes to catch any stragglers.