GoDaddy is quite a recognizable brand dealing with web services. The company titles itself the world’s #1 domain registrar but there is a lot more to GoDaddy than domain registration, e.g.: website hosting & design, online stores, SSL certificates and (the focus of this article) email hosting. We’ve recently observed a rising interest in the last area, specifically, migration from GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 (Office 365).
If you use email with GoDaddy, there are chances your mailboxes are hosted on an IMAP server, a hosted Exchange server, or in the Microsoft 365 from GoDaddy cloud. Currently, GoDaddy officially offers the last option only, so, in this tutorial, I will focus on the scenario involving cloud as a source mailbox location.
Table of contents:
- Reasons for GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 migration
- Options for GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 migration
- Successful GoDaddy email migration with CodeTwo
- GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 migration walkthrough
- Solution for any GoDaddy migration scenario and more
Reasons for GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 migration
Microsoft 365 from GoDaddy is based on Microsoft’s cloud but it is not the same thing as the ‘original’ Microsoft 365. When browsing through tech forums, most admins advise against this offering. While it may be cheaper, there are a few problems that they highlight, such as limited administration features (including security settings), limited app and add-in availability, sign-in issues or no access to Microsoft’s tech support.
Additionally, there is a number of limitations for email end-users, as listed there.
Essentially, migrating your mailboxes to a Microsoft 365 offering bought directly from Microsoft, you will get rid of these limitations. And the additional features may come in handy for every business.
Options for GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 migration
When attempting to migrate your organization’s mailboxes (and public folders) to Microsoft 365, you basically have 3 options:
- PST file – provided you have few users (which may often be the case because GoDaddy’s offer is targeted at small businesses), you can use option to export a single mailbox to a PST file in Outlook, and later import it to Outlook with a new Microsoft 365 profile added. Any drawbacks? The process is arduous and unreliable. Learn more
- Native migration tool in Microsoft 365 – once you’ve bought a Microsoft 365 offering directly from Microsoft and can access the Exchange admin center, you can make use of the option to migrate your mailboxes between Microsoft 365 tenants. Keep in mind that it’s an IMAP migration, so only email will be migrated, it will include some PowerShell scripting, and is not always as reliable as it should be. Learn more
- Third-party tool – paid but much more convenient, automated, and reliable option. Additionally, third-party migration tools usually offer premium features which can make an admin’s life easier. For example, CodeTwo Office 365 Migration can automatically create and match source and target mailboxes, batch-assign Microsoft 365 licenses or perform delta migrations at a scheduled time. Learn more
Successful GoDaddy email migration with CodeTwo
The third option appears to be the most reliable one, offers admins value-added features and possibilities, and is even recommended by Microsoft. That’s why it is a good idea to make use of it to painlessly and professionally move your organization to its new home. In this tutorial, I will specifically use CodeTwo Office 365 Migration to transfer mailboxes from GoDaddy in the most common scenario – between Microsoft 365 tenants.
Prerequisites
There is a number of considerations you should take into account before starting your migration:
- Make sure you’re the global administrator in both source tenant and target tenant, as well as the local administrator on the machine where you intend to install and use CodeTwo Office 365 Migration.
- Check minimum system requirements, and next download and install CodeTwo Office 365 Migration on a machine with Internet access to both source tenant and target tenant.
- Purchase* a number of licenses corresponding to the number of mailboxes you want to migrate and activate them. Keep in mind that to migrate public folder, you need 100 licenses.
- To avoid migration failures, reach out to GoDaddy support to learn about maximum message size set for your source tenant and apply the same or higher limit in your target tenant, as shown in this article.
- Buy a Microsoft 365 plan with Exchange Online, covering sufficient number of licenses for users in your organization.
- If you want to continue using your domain at GoDaddy with the new tenant, remember to configure the initial domain (onmicrosoft.com), so that your current domain name precedes the ‘onmicrosoft.com’ bit. For example, if your domain at GoDaddy is company.com, then your initial domain should be configured as company.onmicrosoft.com.
- If you are migrating public folders, you need to create a public folder mailbox in the target Microsoft 365 tenant before migration. Learn more
Once you are sure you’re 100% prepared, proceed to the next part.
* You can naturally test CodeTwo Office 365 Migration before you buy it. The trial version can be used for 30 days and allows you to migrate up to 10 items per folder. Learn more
GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 migration walkthrough
Below you’ll find the description of the migration process that should fit most GoDaddy email migration scenarios. If you would like to make use of more advanced options or your migration scenario is more complex, I encourage you to consult CodeTwo Office 365 Migration user’s manual.
Connect to source GoDaddy tenant and choose mailboxes to migrate
- Launch CodeTwo Office 365 Migration and start a new migration job wizard by clicking Create a new migration job link on the How to start card and choosing Office 365 as a source server type.
- First, name your job as you wish (e.g. GoDaddy email migration).
- In the second step of the wizard (Mailbox types), choose if you want to migrate your primary mailboxes, archive mailboxes, or both. Note that if you’re migrating archive mailboxes, you you’ll need to enable them in your target tenant, as shown in this article, before proceeding with the wizard.
- In the next step, start the source connection wizard by choosing Add new source connection from the Source server drop-down menu in the Source mailboxes step.
- In the wizard, you can leave default options as they are – the only thing you need to do is to click the Log in as Office 365 admin button in the Application registration step and provide your global administrator credentials you use to sign in to manage your Microsoft 365 from GoDaddy. Thanks to that, the program will be able to access your source mailboxes (and public folders) in order to migrate their contents.
- Once you connect successfully (there will be green checkmarks), close the source connection wizard and choose source mailboxes to migrate. You’ll most probably want to migrate all the mailboxes. To do that, click Add > All Active Directory users. If you wish to migrate public folders or individual mailboxes, just use the other available options. Finally, click Next to proceed.
Connect to target Microsoft 365 tenant
- Now, it’s time to connect to the target tenant. To start a new target connection wizard, choose Add new target connection from the Target server drop-down menu.
- Simply follow the same instructions as in step 3 from the previous section to let the program access your target tenant’s Entra ID (Azure AD) and eventually move your email data to the target environment. Click Next to proceed.
Create target mailboxes or use automatch
- In the Match mailboxes step, click the button to open the window of the mailbox matching feature. Thanks to the matching process, source mailboxes (and public folders) contents will be migrated to appropriate target ones.
- Choose Automatch > Automatch all mailboxes. In the dialog that opens, select the Create target users/mailboxes if they don’t exist checkbox.
Info
If you’ve already created users/mailboxes in your target environment, don’t select the checkbox, but click the Automatch button to proceed to step 4.
- CodeTwo Office 365 Migration can automatically create your target users/mailboxes that will be matched to the source ones. In the window that opens, you can precisely define patterns for creating them by using Entra ID (Azure AD) properties, set the initial password, and decide which Entra ID attributes are to be copied to the target environment (learn more). Once you’re ready, click OK to close the window.
Example
You can choose that an email address of each of your users in the target environment will look as follows:
First name initial (the {F} property) + full-stop + last name (the {LastName} property) + @ + domain name = {F}.{LastName}@mycompany.com
Result: If your user’s name is Adele Vance, the email address will be [email protected], and so on.
- Click the Automatch button to automatically create users/mailboxes and match them to your source users/mailboxes. If, for some reason, certain mailboxes haven’t been matched, you can correct it by right-clicking a given target mailbox (or public folder mailbox) and choosing a desirable option from the menu (e.g. to create a new user).
- Once you’re satisfied with matching results, click Save in the top-left corner and close the Match mailboxes window to return to the new migration job wizard.
Configure additional options
The next four steps of the wizard let you further customize your migration process. They offer you certain premium features which allow you to:
- Run your migration job in a desired time periods (particularly useful when your migration job is large) or repeatedly attempt to migrate just newly added content (Scheduler). Learn more
- Migrate only these items (e.g., emails, contacts, etc.) which are older or newer than a given date (Time filter). Learn more
- Choose folder types (e.g., Emails or Notes) which you want to migrate, as well as decide if some special folders (e.g., the Junk folder) are to be migrated at all (Folder filter). Learn more
- Set the number of mailboxes migrated simultaneously and the maximum size of an item to be migrated (Advanced settings). Learn more
If you are not planning to use these features for your migration job or you are satisfied with the default settings, simply skip to the last wizard step by clicking Next.
The last step, Job summary, is pretty self-explanatory – once you are OK with the entire configuration of the job, click Finish to close the wizard and add your job to the program.
Start and manage your migration job
You can find your newly configured job on the JOBS tab – one of the two main tabs of the program. To start the migration right away, click your job’s name and the Start button.
When your migration job is under way, you can use various controls available on the JOBS tab to manage the job, e.g., use buttons like Pause or Run delta migration on the ribbon to manually control job execution or follow job’s progress on the Job migration progress card. For a detailed description of all the controls, see this article.
Of course, if you like to be well-informed, CodeTwo Office 365 Migration allows you to access a number of reports and have a look at log files.
Post-migration cleanup
Once you successfully migrate all your items from Microsoft 365 from GoDaddy to your fully functional Microsoft 365 tenant, there are a few additional steps you need to complete:
- Disconnect your domain from the source GoDaddy tenant. If you can access the Microsoft 365 admin center, follow these instructions. If you cannot, you’ll need to ask the GoDaddy support team to do it for you. Make sure your data has been fully migrated and can be accessed in the target tenant without any problems, since disconnecting the domain will make you unable to access your source GoDaddy tenant.
- Add the domain to the target Microsoft 365 tenant, configure MX and CNAME (Autodiscover) records, and verify the domain as described here. If you have your domain registered with GoDaddy, you will be able to configure the DNS records automatically thanks to the Domain Connect technology.
- In your target Microsoft 365 tenant, change the default domain from the initial one (e.g. yourcompany.onmicrosoft.com) to the one you used with GoDaddy and want to continue using with the new tenant (e.g. yourcompany.com) as described here.
- Optionally, if your users experience the problems with connecting to the new tenant (server) from Outlook, you will need to create a new Outlook profile for each user in your domain as described here.
Solution for any GoDaddy migration scenario and more
In this article, I’ve shown you how to complete GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 migration when your source email mailboxes reside in the cloud. Yet, it is still possible that you’re on an older email offering from GoDaddy, such as hosted Exchange Server or an IMAP server (when in doubt, ask GoDaddy support). If you’re looking for a migration service or a migration tool available for these scenarios, look no further as CodeTwo Office 365 Migration supports them as well. You’ll find more detailed information here and here.
Here’s why companies choose CodeTwo Office 365 Migration:
- Migration of different types of items such as emails, contacts, tasks, etc.
- Support for cutover, staged and hybrid migration
- Automation, including automated mailbox matching, user creation, and Microsoft 365 license assignment
- Full service availability – software installed locally
- No PowerShell scripting required
- Secure solution – developed pursuant to the ISO/IEC 27001 & 27018 standards, no third party involved, OAuth 2.0 and MFA support. Learn more
- Recognized by benchmarking authorities (e.g., Gartner) and end-users
- 24/5 support from highly trained technical staff
To learn all about CodeTwo Office 365 Migration, visit the product’s page.
If you are interested in testing the software for free before getting down to the migration, you can find the latest trial version here.
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