Yandex Mail for Domain alternatives: how to move your domain elsewhere

Free "mail for your domain" offerings have a habit of changing: terms tighten, features move behind a paywall, or the service stops accepting new domains altogether. If you built your company's addresses on one of them, the good news is that the valuable part — the domain — is yours, and moving is mostly a DNS exercise.

What you actually have to move

Three things, in this order of difficulty:

1. The mail itself. Messages and folders, copied over IMAP.
2. The configuration. Mailboxes, aliases, forwarding, filters and signatures.
3. The delivery. MX records pointing at the new provider, plus SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

Contacts and calendars, if you used them, are exported and imported separately.

Choosing the replacement

Judge candidates on the things that will matter in two years:

• A clear, paid business model. A free service can be withdrawn; a paid one has an incentive to keep running.
• Storage per mailbox and how aliases are counted.
• IMAP/SMTP support, so you are never locked in again.
• A migration tool that copies from IMAP sources — it turns a weekend of work into an afternoon.
• Authentication built into onboarding rather than left to you.
• Support you can reach when mail stops flowing.
• Privacy terms you are comfortable showing a customer.

Moving without downtime

The sequence is what keeps you online:

1. Create the same addresses at the new provider.
2. Copy the mail over IMAP while the old service still receives everything. If two-factor authentication is on at the source, generate an app password first.
3. Publish SPF and DKIM for the new provider.
4. Change the MX records.
5. Leave the old mailboxes open for a week; run the import once more at the end.
6. Verify, then close the old account.

> Tip: do not delete anything at the source until the new mailbox has been verified message for message.

After the move

Update every system that sends in your name — invoicing, CRM, contact forms — and add them to your SPF record. Recreate filters and signatures. Reconnect phones and desktop clients. Then watch bounces for a week; they reveal anything you missed.

Frequently asked questions

Can I move all my old mail? Yes, as long as the source supports IMAP. Both messages and folder structure come across.

Will my address change? No. The address belongs to your domain, not to the provider — that is the whole point of using your own domain.

How long does the transfer take? Copying depends on message count: a few thousand messages take minutes, tens of thousands can take hours. DNS propagation adds up to 48 hours in the worst case.

Do I need to inform my contacts? No, because the address stays the same. Tell only the services that need SPF updates.

Moving to imail.com.tr

imail.com.tr business plans include an import tool: pick your current provider, enter the account details (or an app password if 2FA is enabled) and start the copy. The job stops itself when it is done. Plans are on the business page; the own-domain guide covers the DNS side.