Transfering email account to DreamHost

#1

Hello,

I am a DreamHost customer with a small website. A few months ago a lady who liked my website asked me to take over as webmaster of her small website. Now she is proposing that when the bill comes due she close her web hosting account with another company and transfer her website to my DreamHost account. She has paid a few years in advance for her domain name registration so she does not want to transfer it but just have it point at the new location of her website.

The big question is what happens regarding her email account that is currently part of her web hosting account? Her email address is of the form something@herdomainname.ca. She uses her email for everything and she considers it very important to keep her email address!

Is it possible to transfer her email account to my DreamHost web hosting account? What options do we have and how should I advise her? I have never had a DreamHost email account but maybe I should create one just to try it.

Iceberg
minus40.info

#2

Does the previous host use cPanel? If so, our importer tool in the web panel can probably just grab everything for them and set it up here automatically: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/CPanel_Importer

If not, things will need to be brought over manually. Unfortunately there is not a real easy way to bring email accounts over, but she will indeed be able to still use any current addresses she deems important. Any actual emails/messages currently on the server that she’d like to keep should be backed up/downloaded locally via a mail client such as Thunderbird or Outlook. Once the domain is added to your account here (on the Manage Domains page in your panel) to be hosted, you can go to Mail > Manage Email and re-create the important addresses for the domain there. Alternatively, you can have our panel help set up Gmail for the domain, and the addresses can be set up there as well.

Once the addresses are set up and you have all the site content uploaded to our servers, you can go to where the domain name is registered, and point the nameservers to ours: ns1.dreamhost.com, ns2.dreamhost.com, ns3.dreamhost.com.
Also, she can transfer her domain registration to us if she’d like at any time; it will not affect her current registration other than by adding another year to the current expiration date! :slight_smile:

Here’s another article that might help: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Transfer_your_hosting_to_us . And please feel free to contact our support DreamTeam if you have any questions or need help setting any of this up: http://dhurl.org/dhsupport

Hope this helps!

#3

For the benefit of anyone who may be reading this thread in the future the correct link is: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Transfer_your_hosting_to_us

The link given by DH_Elle S is broken only because there is a period at the end of it. A mistake I could have easily made.

Unfortunately the very first step on the Transfer_your_hosting_to_us gives a link to a site that cannot handle two letter country code top level domains. The alternative site listed does not provide the information I require. I guess I am doing more research.

The important thing, as I understand DH_Elle S’s reply, is that it is possible to re-create the important email address here after backing up all of the messages in the current email account.

Thank you DH_Elle S.

Iceberg

#4

Iceberg, what’s the 2 letter TLD? You may be able to use http://www.iana.org/cgi-bin/whois

#5

The two letter top level domain is CA for Canada.

Using the link in Ipstenu-DH’s message I typed in the domainname.ca of the website I have been asked to transfer to my web hosting account at DreamHost. I received information about the top level registrar of all .ca domains which is cira.ca instead of the specific website I was inquiring about.

Using whois.cira.ca I have discovered the website is listed as private with only the name of the web hosting / domain name seller listed.

Iceberg

#6

I really wish all the registrars like that would agree to a common protocol :confused:

You don’t have to transfer your domain registration to us though. You can change your nameservers to point to us, and leave the registrar as is (a lot of people do that).