bring your emails with you - Sky? other ISPs?

I notice Sky's broadband promotional literature promises that in some cases it's possible to "bring your emails with you."

Can anyone say how efficient this service is? Are all emails transferred? or only inbox messages?

I'm with Plusnet currently and we have a dozen or so email addresses set up on the account. Many of these email addresses have multiple sub folders created within the webmail system so that old stuff is easy to find. I just wonder if all these old messages would be copied over to Sky automatically if we move?

Do other ISPs offer a "bring your emails with you" service?

It's probably best to make sure and download or forward everything of significance to a gmail account or similar before changing ISP, but it's interesting to even see that this possibility exists. I wouldn't've thought it possible until I saw the blurb on Sky's website.

My advice would be to get an email host and see how much you can get transferred to them. Now is the ideal time, and you never have to worry about this again.

Plus, within reason, you choose your own domain name. Like the one you can see in my Profile page.

I've got a lot more explanation on this page, plus a link to the host and domain registrar I use. The cheapest hosting package caters for two domains if you want, both with webspace. Cost equivalent to under £1.50pm as long as you register domains for two years not just one.

There are slightly cheaper ones, but I find this one and their support excellent.

Whether things are transferrable depends on the format they are held in. Does the Plusnet one let you back them up to your computer, or use a email client (POP3/IMAP/SMTP) to access them? If POP3 or IMAP is available you can get them across to nearly anywhere, with a bit of time.

Edit. Just looked at Plusnet email help, and yes you can get them all down to your computer, possibly with your structure, and upload to most other places maintaining the structure.

I typed a lot more then hit the wrong button and lost it. Will try to redo tomorrow if you are interested.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 28-Jul-15 00:26:22)

In reply to a post by Ichneumon:

I notice Sky's broadband promotional literature promises that in some cases it's possible to "bring your emails with you."

Can anyone say how efficient this service is? Are all emails transferred? or only inbox messages?

Do other ISPs offer a "bring your emails with you" service?

Why bother? I use three email addresses from three previous ISP's I was with, they are all from defunct ISP's one goes back to dial-up days and they all still work.

In reply to a post by E7er:

Why bother? ...
...they all still work

I wouldn't care to leave it to chance. From experience previous ISPs denied access to the email accounts after leaving. IIRC one of them waited about a month before locking the account after the contract ended, another at midnight as soon the contract finished.

We're not definitely moving to Sky but I did also read that their email is in conjunction with Yahoo so it will exist forever even after leaving.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

My advice...

Thanks for the suggestions. I will look at this in more detail as actually this was a possibility that I had in mind to explore.

I use various free webmail as well, but I tend to treat them as somewhat disposable and there are websites that won't let you sign up unless you have an ISP based address.

I have a sneaky suspicion that last time I used Evolution or Thunderbird to access mail on a Plusnet account it would only download what was in the inbox, sub folders were ignored.

If you use IMAP I think it should download the subfolders as well, as long as they are subfolders within the Inbox, not standalone within the account.

"Sent" should also download.

POP3 for this purpose isn't safe, in case it goes wrong. IMAP you can always try again, if careful.

If you go for Tsohost I prefer their cPanel hosting to their Cloud one, as I feel cPanel gives me far more control. And better statistics for websites. I have one site + email on Cloud and although it works fine it feels a bit like opening a modern car bonnet and being impotent to do much except fill the washer bottle!

IMAP will download all folders from root on the server. In fact it will mirror them.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

POP3 for this purpose isn't safe, in case it goes wrong.

If POP3 goes wrong it won't delete from server so you can always try again. The DELEte command is distinct from the RETRieve command and is only invoked by mail clients once the RETRieve has completed successfully.

Not all servers offer IMAP. Does PN?

Edited by XRaySpeX (Tue 28-Jul-15 22:58:10)

In reply to a post by Ichneumon:

I have a sneaky suspicion that last time I used Evolution or Thunderbird to access mail on a Plusnet account it would only download what was in the inbox, subfolders were ignored.

That's cuz you were using POP3 which can only see Inbox. I guess from that that PN doesn't do IMAP.

It does have IMAP.

�Choose POP3 or IMAP for the Incoming e-mail server type (I don't know what to choose)

from the Plusnet Help on setting up an email client.

Thanks for all the help on this. I will have to tinker with the email clients when I find a convenient time to do it. Been a long time since I used a client, seems so outdated now! still that won't matter for the purpose of backups.

As for the domain/paid email - this isn't going to happen for the family due extra cost & complication... but I may still explore this option for myself only if I don't like the email service wherever we finally migrate to.