Free Email Account Migration

People keep personal mailboxes for decades. A free-to-free migration might mean Hotmail to Gmail, Yahoo to Outlook.com, Gmail to iCloud, AOL to Gmail, or a long-lived ISP mailbox to a modern provider.

What Makes Free Mail Hard

Free providers often have strict throttling, app-password requirements, OAuth prompts, folder quirks, message-size limits, and security checks that can pause automated access. The migration should be paced and resumable rather than treated like one huge upload.

Provider Checklist

• Confirm whether IMAP is enabled and whether the account needs an app password or OAuth approval.
• Check that the destination has enough free storage before copying years of attachments.
• Decide whether spam, trash, archive, and old custom folders should be copied.
• Keep both accounts active until the final verification pass is done.

No-Custody Default

Migration Monkey should move free mailboxes through direct IMAP/API bridge mode where possible. The control plane tracks progress and errors, but message bodies should not be stored by Migration Monkey unless assisted encrypted relay is deliberately selected.

Credit Notes

Small personal mailbox moves can be priced like generic IMAP. Huge decades-old accounts with attachment-heavy archives, provider throttling, or relay-assisted retries will consume more credits because they require longer monitoring and more verification.