Move your email from Zoho Mail to FranklyMail
Zoho has more ways to fail than any other provider here, and all of them report the same "invalid credentials" message. The server name depends on both your region and your plan, IMAP has to be switched on, and new free accounts do not have it at all.
Which password Zoho Mail wants
Your normal Zoho password if two-factor authentication is off. With 2FA on — or if you sign in to Zoho through Google or another provider, or your organisation uses single sign-on — you need an application-specific password instead, because there is no password for the mail server to check.
Getting it, step by step.
Written against Zoho Mail's current screens — the words in quotes are the words on the buttons.
- 1
Work out your server name. It depends on two things: paid accounts on your own domain use imappro, personal and free-org accounts use imap; and the ending matches your region — .com, .eu, .in, .com.au, .jp, .uk, .sa, or zohocloud.ca for Canada.
The quickest check is the address bar in Zoho webmail: mail.zoho.eu means your ending is .eu. Zoho also prints the exact values under Settings → Mail Accounts → your address → Server Configurations Details.
- 2
Switch IMAP on: Settings → Mail Accounts, click your primary address, find the IMAP section and tick "IMAP Access", then Save.
Off by default. On an organisation account an administrator can also block it, and can even hide the setting so you never see the tick box.
- 3
On that same screen, open the folder settings and make sure every folder you want is selected, and that archived mail is included.
This is the one that quietly loses mail. Zoho only exposes the folders ticked here, and archived messages are excluded unless you say otherwise — the import then finishes successfully having copied a fraction of your mailbox, with no error anywhere.
- 4
If two-factor is on, generate an app password: sign in at accounts.zoho.com — or your region’s equivalent, such as accounts.zoho.eu — then Security, App passwords, Generate New Password.
Older Zoho pages call these "Application Specific Passwords". Same thing. Twelve characters, shown once, typed without spaces.
- 5
Put the server, port 993, your full address and that password into the import form.
What to put in the import form.
In the FranklyMail panel, open Mailboxes and find "Bring your old mail across".
imappro.zoho.com- IMAP server
imappro.zoho.com- Port
- 993 — TLS from the first byte.
- Username
- Your full address at Zoho Mail, not just the part before the @.
- Password
- Password, or an app password with 2FA, from the steps above.
For the technically curious: on 24 August 2026 this server answered AUTH=PLAIN, AUTH=XOAUTH2 to a CAPABILITY command on port 993. That is what it accepts on the wire; which password it accepts from you is the separate question the section above answers.
What goes wrong with Zoho Mail.
- A new free-plan Zoho account has no IMAP at all — Zoho states plainly that the feature is not available on the Forever Free Plan for recent signups. Older free accounts kept it. If IMAP Access is nowhere to be found, this is why, and the only route out is a month of a paid plan.
- Every mistake here produces the same message: "Invalid credentials". Wrong region, wrong imap-versus-imappro prefix, IMAP not enabled, and a genuinely wrong password are indistinguishable. Check the server name before you doubt the password.
- Zoho limits how fast a mail client may fetch: about 250 MB every fifteen minutes on a personal account, and 1 GB on an organisation one. A 20 GB mailbox is therefore a day or more of copying, and it is not stuck.
- Your account’s region has its own sign-in host too. accounts.zoho.com cannot find a user registered in the EU — you have to go to accounts.zoho.eu.
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 worksMoving 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.