How to migrate emails between two cPanel accounts at Hostinger

Updated 2 weeks ago

 

Objective: Transfer email data from one cPanel account to another, ensuring all mailboxes, settings, and messages remain intact.

📌 Applies to: Users transferring email data between cPanel hosting accounts.
Note: This is a manual method and can only be performed by the user.

What You’ll Need Before You Start


Step 1 – Prepare the Backup in the Source cPanel

  1. Access File Manager in the source cPanel account.
  2. Navigate to the root directory:
    /home/your-username/
    
  3. Locate the mail and etc folders.Hostinger cPanel File Manager showing home directory and mail folder highlighted

    💡 If you don’t see them, click the Settings button (top-right) and enable Show Hidden Files (dotfiles).

    cPanel File Manager with a save dialog open, highlighting the text field for the backup file name

  4. Right-click on each folder → Compress → Choose Zip Archive → Confirm compression.
    • First compress mail
    • Then compress etc
      1. cPanel File Manager context menu with Compress option highlighted
  5. Right-click on each .zip file and download them to your computer.
    Download history showing mail.zip as the highlighted file in the list

Step 2 – Restore the Backup in the Destination cPanel

  1. In the destination cPanel, make sure your domain is added (check under Domains section).
    cPanel Domains page with the second domain’s Manage button highlighted
  2. Open File Manager and go to:
    /home/your-username/
    

    (Optional): If mail or etc folders already exist, and you want to override them, rename them to mail-OFF and etc-OFF for backup.

  3. Upload etc.zip and mail.zip to the File Manager.
    cPanel File Manager showing home directory and highlighted mail folder for email backup upload
  4. Extract both mail.zip and etc.zip files.
    cPanel File Manager context menu with Extract option highlighted
  5. If the folder structure looks like /etc/etc or /mail/mail, move the contents to the correct root-level folders:/home/your-username/mail and /home/your-username/etc
    cPanel file manager context menu with Move option highlighted

    cPanel Move dialog with /mail path selected and Move Files button highlighted
  6. Delete the now-empty etc and mail folders.

Step 3 – Confirm Migration Success

  1. Go to Email Accounts in your destination cPanel.
  2. You should see the email addresses listed. Try logging into one via Webmail to verify email data is accessible.
    cPanel Email Accounts list with admin@budidayaporang.info and emails@budidayaporang.info highlighted