Switching to a new email service can seem as unsettling as moving from the house you have been living in for a (long) while. And when it involves a business / organization switching to an alternate email service, it’s akin to moving a whole family to a new house.
Migration is tough. Why? You and your family, have gotten used to the familiarity of your current house! This attachment to familiarity gets so strong that even if your house were haunted, over time, you would be accustomed to a levitating chair, creaking doors, eerie sounds or even the spouse acting weird now and then.
And when such happenings do manage to push you to consider moving, the very thought of ‘the process of moving’ to a new unfamiliar dwelling, intimidates you from proceeding with it. What can be pleasant about sorting through accumulated house stuff, packing and loading boxes to a truck and praying nothing gets broken or lost in transport?
Besides, what’s the assurance that chairs will not float in your new place too? Unsure of how the other options will turn out, you stay in the established comfort zone – the known devil. ‘The Enduring’ continues.
That is the exact same way people get attached to a familiar email service despite its downside.
We get so used to a particular interface over time that we are okay with persistent annoyances (like ads; in the guise of emails now-a-days) and flaws (important emails landing in Spam). We stay with it despite being aware that privacy is compromised, support requests are ignored, spam filtering is imperfect.
The very thought of the process of moving large chunks of emails, contacts and calendar info to a new service, is daunting. When this involves a business with many employees and their email accounts, migration seems even more cumbersome to go through.
However, here is the good news. Switching your email service does not have to be tough.
While it is not practically viable to temporarily move furniture and people to get a feel of an alternate house, it is relatively easy to evaluate a new email service for your business.
Here are two easy ways to test and transition to an alternative email service for your organization.
Setting up split / dual delivery
(Imagine that part of your family were able to get a feel of living in an alternate house for a few weeks)
The crucial part of making a switch to another email provider is changing your domain’s Mail eXchanger (MX) records (like officially changing your house address). With split /dual delivery, a selected number of user accounts (think a part of your family) can be configured to use an alternate email provider for evaluation. So you don’t have to rush to move all your users’ email accounts (think the whole family) until you are convinced that the alternate service is better.
For more technical information on evaluating an email service using the split / dual delivery method, check this page.
Subdomain stripping
(Imagine duplicates of existing furniture and your items projected in the alternate house for trial)
This is yet another way to evaluate an alternate email service without changing your base domain’s (yourcompany.com / .co.uk / .net / .org etc.) MX records. Here, you create a subdomain like say, trial.yourcompany.com, point the MX records of this subdomain to an alternate email service, temporarily.
Now, when sub domain stripping is enabled in the alternate email service, emails forwarded from your current service to user@trial.yourcompany.com will land up in your user@yourcompany.com inbox in the alternate service; the ‘trial’ part is technically stripped. As a result, a copy of every email is made available in an alternate (different) interface for evaluation.
For more technical information on evaluating an email service using the subdomain stripping method, check this page.
So, if you are a business wanting to switch to a better email hosting service but weary of the process of moving, rest assured that it is not a hassle with the above evaluation options.
Honestly, whether it’s a haunted house or your email service that’s haunting you, it’s time to say goodbye and switch to a better option.
BTW, Happy Halloween!
I'm having the same problem. I have emails that are just gone. There is no notice that they were not received, nothing to indicate that there was a problem, just disappearing emails. Zoho is becoming the "Bermuda Triangle" of emails. Worse of all there is no support from Zoho to help solve this problem. Did anyone find a solution?
We're currently on GoDaddy and need to leave for the exact reason you are seeing on Zoho - disappearing emails. Did you figure out what to do?
Beginning to feel like zoho is the haunted house. some emails come in, others just disappear. They are not bounced they are just gone. I have spent hours looking and checking to no avail. any ideas. I know for sure that 3 emails from the same domain are disappearing.