How to transfer accounts without confusing users about E-Mails and servernames.

[lorio]

Is E-Mail important for your users/customers?
Is it an important part of your offer?
Is it important to be provided by Cpanel/WHM?

If the answers are Yes you will might have more than one Cpanel installation running.
If that is the case you will have to hassle to think about what TLS cert to buy and install and what access URLs you provider your customers.


What is your impression about the current status under 11.40?
What would be a perfect experience for a user/customer?

I would like to see:

1.) One access point (login to Cpanel and Webmail) for user with a TLS/SSL Cert and without ports which get blocked by firewalls. If you have more than one server with Cpanel you can access via one page which redirect to the correct server.

2.) Mail server with one mailname and TLS cert which can keep the same when doing a transfer of accounts.
Today you can choose between unsecure customer domain or secure host name. The latter won't stay the same when you change server.

What is your bestpractice?

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us! Our feature request system is very useful, and our developers monitor it for input on what features to include with cPanel going forward. Feel free to submit your requests via:

Submit A Feature Request

Thank you.

 

[lorio]

Thanks Michael. I have seens these requested feature trackers on other projects. The problem is that there is no user momentum. My posts are not very attractive in terms of user interest ;-) So to get at least one post beside the post from the friendly and committed cPanelMichael I am always posting here first. I am using the feature request tool. I vote. I comment.

Thanks.

 

[lorio]

Since more and more users are using IMAP there is another obstacle about transferring account.

The express option allows to redirect users to the new server and disable the account on the old server.

Problem is that IMAP users which use SSL are sticking to the old server when sending emails. So you have users which send emails via the old server and save the sent emails on the old server after the transfer happened.
The express option cannot prevent that.

To disable all services is not an option when you have more than one account on the server. To transfer all at the same time is not an option.

 

[phillbooth]

Hello, on the new server you should have a transfer option:

Home » Transfers » Copy an Account From Another Server With an Account Password

All you need is the login for cpanel where the website is currently held.

You should be using something like mail.mywebsite.com or imap.mywebsite.com for the host connections in your clients email setup so you should only need to change the DNS/IPs over night.

If you still need to transfer emails across from the old server then setup the account in something like Thunderbird or Outlook and then setup up the OLD account (using the IP address to connect to the account) so you have both accounts available to you then simply click and drag any emails/folders across to the new machine

 

[lorio]

You should be using something like mail.mywebsite.com or imap.mywebsite.com for the host connections in your clients email setup so you should only need to change the DNS/IPs over night.

Thanks for your answer.
Your post describes the way, which most of us are handling their transfers since years.
But to be sure: With mywebsite.com you mean the domain of the customer, right?
If that is the case, you might log into a cpanel account and take a look at "Mail Client Configuration".

You will find two sections under "Manual Settings".

1.) Secure SSL/TLS Settings (Recommended)
2.) Non-SSL Settings (NOT Recommended)

The customers domain as incoming and outgoing server is only used for Non-SSL Settings.

If you want to use TLS/SSL and SignedCertificates of the server, you will not be able to use the customer domain without trouble in email clients. Smartphones and Thunderbird will allow the user to override the mismatch of signed server certificate and customer domain, but e.g. Outlook will only save this override per session.

Most customers will end with unencrypted access to mail, since the mismatch will ask for using unencrypted way via customer domain.

I am not surprised that these problems are not discussed that much. Most people are happy when they got email running. They don't care about encryption.

The solution without using a mailservercluster might be to use the same domain for all WHM Server and instead of using the hostname of the certain WHM-Server a customersubdomain.

whmhost1.whmdomain.tld -> customer.whmdomain.tld (as mailserver)
whmhost2.whmdomain.tld

Problem will be that the services (exim,dovecot etc..) have to listen and answer to a lot of different subdomains under the wildcard certificate.

This isn't thoroughly thought out. But food for thought.