Email on the same shared hosting as your website means one outage, full quota or blocklisting stops both. Move email to G Suite or Office 365, with the DNS changes, old mail and form routing planned.

One account, two jobs

For a great many small businesses, the email lives in the same place as the website. The mailboxes were created in the hosting control panel the week the site was built, and they have been there ever since.

It is convenient, it is often included in the price, and it works well for years.

Until something goes wrong with the account. Then the website and the email go wrong together, and the business loses both its shop window and its way of hearing about the problem.

How one problem becomes two

The second catches businesses by surprise. Years of attachments in the mailboxes count against the same storage limit as the website, and when it fills, both start failing at once.

Why it fails at the worst moment

When the site goes down, customers cannot email to say so, because the email is down too. When email fails, the contact form's notifications fail with it.

Bounced messages go back to the people who sent them, who see an error and usually give up rather than phone.

And the host's warnings, about storage running out or an address being blocklisted, often go to a mailbox on the very account that is in trouble.

Blocklists and a shared address

On shared hosting, the website and the email usually send from the same internet address, and on many servers that address is shared with other accounts.

If a form on any of those sites is abused to send spam, or a site is hacked to do it, the address can land on the blocklists other mail servers consult.

Your quotes and invoices are then rejected along with the spam. Getting off a blocklist can take days, and it starts with somebody noticing, usually when a customer asks why the invoice never arrived.

What a separate email service changes

G Suite and Office 365 both run email on dedicated systems, with their own spam filtering, their own sending reputation and far larger mailboxes than a typical hosting plan.

The website and the email stop sharing a fate. A problem with the site stays a problem with the site, and moving to a new host later no longer touches anybody's inbox.

What changes in DNS

The move happens in your domain's DNS settings, which may sit with the registrar or with the host.

The MX records, which say where your mail is delivered, point at the new service. The SPF record adds the new service, and keeps the web server if the site still sends its own form emails.

Office 365 also uses an autodiscover record, which lets Outlook set itself up. Each service publishes the exact values to enter, its DKIM key included.

Lowering the records' time to live, the period other servers remember them, a day beforehand makes the switch take hold quickly.

Keep the old mailboxes for a few weeks afterwards, since a few servers will go on using the old records for a while.

A worked example

A six-person architecture practice had its website and email on one shared hosting account, set up nine years ago and rarely looked at since.

Drawings and consultants' reports had been arriving as attachments the whole time. Nobody deleted anything, because the mail programs kept everything on the server and nobody saw a reason to.

One Thursday afternoon the account reached its storage limit. Incoming email bounced, the contact form stopped sending, and the website, unable to write even small temporary files, began showing errors.

The host's warnings had gone to the practice's general mailbox weeks earlier, on the same account, among the newsletters.

The host raised the limit for a few days as a stopgap. The next month, email moved to a separate service on a planned evening: DNS changed, old mail imported, the scanner and accounting software reconfigured, and every form tested.

The hosting account now holds the website and nothing else.

Everything that sends through the old server

The part of a move most often missed is not the mailboxes. It is everything set up years ago with the old server's name and a password, quietly sending through it.

The website's contact form. A scanner or copier with scan-to-email. Accounting or invoicing software, a booking system, an online store's order confirmations, and phones set up years ago with the old settings.

Each needs listing before the switch and checking after it, since each fails in its own way, and some fail silently.

The form that still delivers to the old mailbox

One failure deserves its own warning, because it hides so well.

After the MX records move, the web server may still believe it handles email for your domain. It then delivers the contact form's enquiries to the old mailbox on the hosting account, where nobody looks any more.

On cPanel, the most common hosting control panel, the setting is called email routing, and it needs to say remote. Then send a test enquiry from every form and confirm it arrives in the new inbox.

The counter-case

Moving is not urgent for everybody.

A one-person business with light email, on a well-run host that keeps mail on separate servers, may have little to gain. Some hosting is set up exactly that way, and the host can say so in one line.

A business with many seasonal staff may find per-person subscriptions add up, and aliases or shared inboxes can cover the people who only need to receive.

For most businesses that depend on email, though, separating it from the website is worth doing, and worth planning so nothing is lost.

The move, in order

  1. List every mailbox, alias and forwarder you have.
  2. List everything else that sends email for you.
  3. Lower the DNS time to live a day ahead.
  4. Point the MX records at the new service.
  5. Set the old server's email routing to remote.
  6. Import old mail into the new mailboxes.
  7. Send a test from every form and device.

Step five is the one that is easiest to miss. Without it, the website keeps delivering its own enquiries to the old mailbox, and they pile up where nobody looks.

Why the address should be on your own domain in the first place is covered in email from an address that matches your domain.

Frequently asked questions

What is wrong with email on the website's hosting?

One problem reaches both. An outage, a full storage quota, a blocklisted server address or a hacked site can stop your email and your website at the same moment.

How does storage take both down?

On shared hosting, mailboxes and website files usually count against one storage limit. Years of attachments fill it, and then email bounces and the site starts failing together.

What changes in DNS when email moves?

The MX records, which say where mail is delivered, and the SPF record, which must include the new service and the web server if it still sends forms.

Will we lose old email in the move?

Not if it is planned. G Suite and Office 365 both offer tools to import mail from the old server, and the old mailboxes can stay available for a few weeks afterwards.

Why might form enquiries still go missing?

Because the web server may still think it handles your email and deliver form enquiries to the old mailbox. On cPanel hosting, the email routing setting needs to say remote.

What else sends through the old server?

Often more than expected: the contact form, scanners with scan-to-email, accounting or invoicing software, booking systems, store order confirmations, and phones set up years ago.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Email and website on one hosting account?

Tell us your domain. We will list everything that depends on the current setup and plan a move that loses nothing.

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