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Move your email from cPanel, Plesk or a web host to FranklyMail

Your control panel prints the exact server name — copy it rather than guessing. Do this before you touch DNS: the usual mail.yourdomain.com address stops resolving the moment you move the domain, and the import then fails for a reason that has nothing to do with your mailbox.

Get started, $9/yr Skip to the steps

Which password cPanel, Plesk and web hosts wants

The mailbox’s own password, the one set in the control panel. Neither cPanel nor Plesk has an app-password concept, so this is the only credential there is. If you do not know it, resetting it in the panel is the only way — it cannot be read back — and be aware that resetting it breaks every phone and laptop already collecting that mailbox until they are reconfigured.

Getting it, step by step.

Written against cPanel, Plesk and web hosts's current screens — the words in quotes are the words on the buttons.

  1. 1

    In cPanel, open Email → Email Accounts, then click "Connect Devices" on the row for your address.

    In Plesk it is Websites & Domains → your domain → Mail Accounts → the "Mail Client Setup" icon, and the section you want is called "Manual Setup".

  2. 2

    Find the block headed "Secure SSL/TLS Settings (Recommended)" and copy the "Incoming Server" value exactly as printed.

    Copy it, do not construct it. The secure block often shows a different hostname from the non-SSL block below it — the server’s own name rather than yours — because that is the name the certificate actually covers. Typing the one you expected produces a certificate error.

  3. 3

    Note the port beside it. It will be 993 for IMAP over SSL.

  4. 4

    Save that hostname somewhere now, before you change any DNS.

    This is the step people skip and regret. See the warning below.

  5. 5

    Put that hostname, port 993, the full address as the username, and the mailbox password into the import form.

What goes wrong with cPanel, Plesk and web hosts.

  • mail.yourdomain.com is a record in your own DNS zone, not a property of the mailbox. When you move the domain to FranklyMail that record stops resolving — or resolves somewhere new — and the import fails with "We could not find that server" even though your old mailbox is untouched and still full. Use the server’s own hostname, the one the SSL block printed, which lives in your host’s zone and is unaffected by anything you do to yours.
  • Some hosts use one fixed server for every customer rather than a per-domain name: Hostinger’s own email is imap.hostinger.com, Namecheap Private Email is mail.privateemail.com, and IONOS is imap.ionos.com. On those, your domain never appears in the server field at all.
  • GoDaddy is three different products with three different answers — cPanel hosting, Professional Email, and the old Workspace Email that is being moved to Microsoft 365. If yours has already been moved, it is a Microsoft mailbox now and no password will work; see the Microsoft 365 page.
  • Shared servers cap how many IMAP connections one address may open from a single network. The default on cPanel servers is twenty and many hosts set it lower, with the server answering "Maximum number of connections from user+IP exceeded". Our import uses one connection at a time, so this should not bite — but if you are also running a mail client against the same mailbox during the copy, close it.
  • Older shared servers often present an expired or mismatched certificate, usually because the automatic renewal stopped when the domain moved. We will not skip that check, because skipping it means handing your password to whoever answered. The fix is at your host’s end, or to use the hostname the certificate actually names.

Then the part that is the same for everyone.

Getting the password is the only step that differs by provider. The order of the move, what does and does not come across, and the one decision that stops you ending up with two copies of every message are on the main migration page.

How the move works

Moving from somewhere else?

$9/yr, and your archive comes with you.

Unlimited mailboxes and aliases on your own domain, 10 GB pooled across the account, 30 days to change your mind.

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