Note: Our documentation pages are a work in progress! If you can't find the answers you need, please email us to let us know. We'll be happy to answer your questions.

Using the mail port tool

The mail porting tool is available here.

Using the mail port tool #

The mail port tool is designed to make it easy to:

Import or export mail between Purelymail and another provider
Transfer mail between Purelymail users
Transfer mail between two third party providers
Coming soon: Download a zip archive of emails from Purelymail or another provider

Basic operation #

The mail port job needs to know two things: where the mail is coming from (a Source) and where the mail is going to (a Destination).

Either of these can be either a Purelymail user, or an external provider.

Once you have selected both, you can proceed to determining how (and which) mail folders of the Source will be transferred to the Destination. Then you may start a mail port job.

The mail port job will then run in the background. You can monitor its progress from the main page, and cancel it at any time.

Working with external providers #

First, make sure your provider offers IMAP connectivity. Then select the "IMAP account" option on either the source or destination. Then you need to enter your email address and password to access the external IMAP account. (Using a temporary "app password" is a good idea, if your provider supports it!)

Next, you need the server settings for your provider's IMAP server. Most of the time, you can hit the "Autodetect" button and we can figure that out automatically. If not, check with your provider for the name of their server, port, and whether to use TLS.

That should be enough! We've added a few provider specific notes below; feel free to let us know if it didn't work for you.

Gmail #

You'll need to turn on IMAP here.

Using an App Password is recommended.

If you are not using an app password and still can't login, you may need to follow Google's instructions to allow "less secure" apps to access your account, or unlock your account.

Outlook #

Outlook IMAP settings can be found here.

Rate limits #

Mail transfer may be limited by your provider's rate limits. The port tool should be able to continue despite these limits, though they may slow it down.

Gmail #

Note that Gmail has relatively low rate limits for IMAP access.

Duplicate messages #

The mail port tool will automatically attempt to avoid adding duplicate messages to a mailbox. Message uniqueness is determined by Message-ID and Received mail headers, and may fail if both are absent.

Charges #

For users with advanced billing plans, usage of the mail port tool is charged as follows:

Total running time: $0.02 per hour. (This does not include time spent waiting due to external provider errors.)
Email transferred externally: $0.18 per GiB. This only includes email sent to an external provider. It does not include email received from an external provider.