Email best practices to migrate to the cloud

Today, a lot of businesses and companies are deciding to take their email system to cloud-based services. This is being done because constant access to emails even when you are not in the workplace has become a requirement now. With services such as Microsoft Outlook or Exchange, you get bound to your workspace to send/receive emails.

Cloud servers are a much better way of handling emails. You can access them anytime, from anywhere, if you have an internet connection. Cloud-based email services provide you the convenience of sending and receiving emails at the address that has your domain attached to it.

Here is how you can effectively transfer your email system to a cloud-based service:

Important questions to ask

The first step is to ask the following questions from your cloud host:

What will be the cost of the migration? How long will the migration process take?

How will your users adapt quickly to migration?

What sort of support do they provide and their plans for emergency situations?

What tools will be applied for the migration and how can it be done in as minimum cost as possible?

Create a plan to account for the losses due to the migration

After introducing a new system to the business, a little downtime is inevitable which is required for setting up and getting used to it. That is why you should have a plan to account for the potential of downtime that may occur after the migration.

You can actually use this plan to come up with a strategy before you apply cloud email services to find out a way of bringing this downtime to the minimum.

Don’t forget to backup

Although your cloud host will most likely provide you with a backup option, it is always better to back up the data yourself. The slightest error during the transfer of huge data can corrupt all of it. You don’t want to lose all your data due to some unforeseen errors in the transfer process.

You can do this by creating backup files manually by transferring all your email data to separate software, but this is the most basic kind of backing up. It may be harder to go through the data but it keeps all your records safe.

Another way is by using your previous email client to make an archive of your previous data. Doing this will save all your data in a coded form that can only be accessed through its server, but at least there will be a backup in case of emergencies.

Keep a close eye on the migration process

Don’t just rely on your cloud host; be a part of the migration process yourself. Staying in constant contact with your cloud host will give them a better chance of understanding the way you want to create your new email service and troubleshoot problems faster.