Import from cPanel or Other Hosts

If your existing email is hosted on shared web hosting — Bluehost, SiteGround, GoDaddy (the email-only or full hosting tiers), Namecheap, HostGator, A2 Hosting, DreamHost, InMotion, OVH — it's almost certainly running cPanel under the hood. cPanel mailboxes speak standard IMAP, which is exactly what TrekMail's migration tool uses to pull mail in. This guide covers a single-mailbox migration; for moving dozens of mailboxes at once, see Migrate from cPanel (Bulk).

Before you start — eligibility check

• The migration tool is available on Starter, Pro, and Agency plans. Nano accounts can't access it.
• You can have one active migration at a time per TrekMail account. If you're already running one, the new attempt is blocked with: "You have an active migration (#X, status: Y). Wait for it to finish or cancel it first."
• You'll need the source mailbox to remain reachable from the internet over IMAP for the full duration of the migration. If you delete the mailbox on cPanel before our import finishes, we lose access to any messages still pending.

Step 1 — Find your source IMAP credentials

In cPanel:

1. Log in to your hosting account's cPanel.
2. Find the Email Accounts section.
3. Locate the email account you want to migrate. Click Connect Devices (or Configure Mail Client on older cPanel versions).
4. Look at the Secure SSL/TLS Settings block. Note these values:

If you've lost the password, reset it in cPanel first: Email Accounts → find the account → Manage or the password icon → set a new one. Use the new password for migration.

Provider-specific quirks

• Bluehost — IMAP host is mail.yourdomain.com. Username is the full address. SSL on 993.
• SiteGround — IMAP host is mail.yourdomain.com (or sometimes mailservices.yourdomain.com). SSL on 993.
• GoDaddy (cPanel-style hosting, NOT the older Workspace email product) — IMAP host imap.secureserver.net or imap.yourdomain.com. Username is the full address.
• Namecheap (PrivateEmail) — IMAP host is mail.privateemail.com. SSL on 993. Username full address.
• HostGator — IMAP host mail.yourdomain.com. SSL on 993. Some older shared accounts only support port 143 — try both.
• DreamHost — IMAP host imap.dreamhost.com. SSL on 993.

For any other provider, follow the cPanel "Connect Devices" panel directly — it shows what to use.

Step 2 — Start the import in TrekMail

1. In TrekMail, click Import in the sidebar.
2. Click the Other (Generic IMAP) provider card. (The cPanel hosts aren't pre-configured because the IMAP details vary; "Other" is the catch-all.)
3. The form expands. Fill in:
   • Server — the incoming server from Step 1.
   • Port — 993.
   • Security — SSL.
   • Email — the full address (e.g. alice@yourcompany.com).
   • Username — leave blank if username equals the email; fill in only if the host wants a different username (e.g. just alice).
   • Password — the mailbox password from Step 1.
4. Click Check connection. We attempt IMAP authentication and list the source folders. On success, you'll see your folder list (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Spam, etc.).
5. If it fails, see Troubleshooting below.

Step 3 — Choose what to import

Once the connection works, the form expands to let you customise:

• Destination mailbox — pick which TrekMail mailbox the imported mail should land in. Usually you've already created a mailbox matching the address you're migrating (e.g. an alice@yourcompany.com mailbox on TrekMail to receive the contents of the old alice@yourcompany.com on cPanel).
• Folders to import — select all, or a subset. The source folder structure is preserved on TrekMail's side. If you're moving an old mailbox just to consolidate, you can skip Spam and Trash to keep things clean.
• Import since (optional) — a date filter. Set this to skip messages older than X (e.g. only import the last 2 years).
• Skip duplicates — checked by default. If the same Message-ID exists already on TrekMail, we skip the copy. Useful if you've previously imported partially and you're running the migration again.

Click Start import. Toast: "Migration started for alice@yourcompany.com". The job is queued and processed in the background — typically a few minutes for a small mailbox, hours for a 10GB+ mailbox.

Step 4 — Monitor and handle failures

The Import page lists all your migrations with their status. Click into one to see:

• Progress — message count + percentage.
• Current folder — what's being copied right now.
• Error message if anything failed.

States you'll see:

Pause/resume work as expected — the resume picks up at the last checkpointed message, no re-copying.

If the migration fails outright, the error message points at the cause: bad credentials, network issue, source disconnected mid-flight, mailbox full on TrekMail side, etc.

Troubleshooting

"Connection to source IMAP server failed"

The most common error during Step 2's Check connection:

• Wrong host — double-check the IMAP hostname from cPanel.
• Wrong port — try 993 first; if your old host only supports 143, contact the host (we don't recommend using unencrypted IMAP — see below).
• Authentication rejected — the password is wrong, or the host wants a different username format. Try the username field with just the local part (e.g. alice instead of alice@yourcompany.com).
• Account locked — some hosts auto-lock email accounts after repeated bad-password attempts (especially Bluehost and GoDaddy). Wait 15 minutes and retry, or reset the password in cPanel.

"Certificate error" / "TLS handshake failed"

Some shared hosts use self-signed or expired SSL certificates. We refuse to ignore certificate errors by default (security). Options:

• If the cert is just self-signed (common on small hosts), reach out to the host — most can supply a valid cert on request.
• Use port 143 with STARTTLS if available (still encrypted, but works with broader cert configurations).
• As a last resort, port 143 with no encryption is supported but very insecure — only use it if you're moving away from this host anyway and the data isn't sensitive.

"Authentication failed" specifically

• The most common cause: wrong password. Try resetting in cPanel and using the new one.
• Some cPanel hosts (GoDaddy especially) recently switched to OAuth or app-specific passwords. If your normal email password works in webmail but not via IMAP, check whether the host requires an app password.
• A small number of hosts disable IMAP by default and require enabling it per-mailbox. Look in cPanel for an "Enable IMAP" or "Allow remote access" toggle.

"I started but the count of imported emails is much smaller than what's in cPanel"

A few possibilities:

• You didn't select all folders. Check the folder list in the migration's detail page.
• The Import since date excluded older mail. Pick "no date filter" to bring everything.
• Duplicates were skipped. If you're retrying an import that previously partially succeeded, duplicates from the prior run are skipped. The total imported count is unique messages, not raw count.
• Spam/Trash were excluded by default. If you want them too, include them in the folder selection.

"Import is stuck on one folder"

Some hosts rate-limit IMAP heavily. A folder with 100k+ messages can take many hours through a rate-limited connection. The Import progress page shows current rate; if you're moving < 100 messages/minute through a busy folder, that's host-side throttling. Be patient or contact the source host to lift the rate limit temporarily.

If a folder appears completely hung (no progress for hours), pause and resume the migration — that recreates the IMAP session and usually unblocks it.

"Migration completed but emails are missing"

Check the destination mailbox folder by folder:

• The source folder structure is preserved as-is, including any host-specific folder names ("Sent Items" from Outlook-style sources vs "Sent" elsewhere).
• The folder might exist but be empty — check whether the folder existed on source but had zero messages.
• IMAP doesn't transfer messages outside folders. If your source had messages outside any folder ("INBOX" only), they land in INBOX on TrekMail.

After migration is complete

• Update your DNS to point MX at TrekMail (see Required DNS Records). This is when inbound mail actually starts arriving at TrekMail; the migration itself is just the historical-mail copy.
• Verify your old mailbox is empty (or that you're OK with whatever's still there) before deleting it on the old host.
• Keep the old host's mailbox running for 1-2 weeks as a safety net while DNS propagates and you confirm new mail is flowing into TrekMail.
• Set up forwarding on the old host for any straggler emails arriving during DNS propagation — point the old mailbox to forward to your new TrekMail address.