Email downtime during domain transfer

April 1, 2005 5:34 AM

Transfering a domain from NetSol to GoDaddy. Approximately how long will the email addresses associated with the domain be non-functional?

I've transfered domains before but I've never had to deal with the email issue. Obviously my concern is that email will be down for a while, especially knowing that transfers can be tricky. Does anybody know if NetSol webmail will still be available after the DNS info is wiped but before GoDaddy picks it up?

posted by anathema to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

This depends on what happens in between. If there is no valid server available for a short period, the sending server will retry over and over (for 1-3 days) until it finds one. Whereas, if email gets sent to a server and that server denies your existence, the mail will bounce (this could happen if delivery is attempted to NetSol after they've kicked you off, or if it's sent to GoDaddy before they set you up).

I'd think the first scenario is more likely. If you know what you're doing, you could mess up your domain name's zone file to force there to be no valid server, and therefore no delivery attempts.
posted by cillit bang at 6:35 AM on April 1, 2005

theoretically if DNS is correct at GoDaddy before the transfer, there shouldn't be any downtime.

theoretically.
posted by petebest at 7:17 AM on April 1, 2005

petebest is on the money assuming that you are not changing email/web hosts in the mix as well.
posted by FlamingBore at 8:34 AM on April 1, 2005

I just did this, and it took about 30 minutes for mail to work mostly, and 2 hours for the address to resolve correctly from Australia (I'm in the U.S.).

When I have to do this for a business client, I do it late Friday night--by Monday morning, everything's peachy.
posted by curtm at 9:37 AM on April 1, 2005

Wow, perfect opportunity for a slight hijack.

I just did the same thing (from Lunarpages to Dreamhost). No problems with mail delivery. What I want to know is how do I transfer my stored mail on the old server to the "same account" on the new server. I copied the files from Lunarpages, and FTPed over to my new space. I see a 'Maildir' but no folders that seem to hold my new accounts. If this is too much trouble, is there any way in Thunderbird to open a local account and import the files from my harddrive?
posted by Gyan at 1:53 PM on April 1, 2005

If you can access both accounts via IMAP, set them both up in Thunderbird and drag the messages across (If you have mail files in lots of separate mailboxes, you probably need to create new ones manually and then copy the messages.
posted by cillit bang at 6:47 PM on April 1, 2005