Best practice to migrate all mailboxes for one domain from Plesk to Mailcow

Batool

Hello All,
It’s my first message.
I’m planning to migrate all mailbox data for a single domain from a Plesk mail server to a Mailcow server, and I’d like to confirm the correct and safest procedure.
Here’s the process I’m found it rsync

Pre-create domain and mailboxes in Mailcow .
Stop mail services to prevent delivery during transfer:
# On Plesk:
systemctl stop qmail

# On Mailcow:
systemctl stop dovecot

Sync mail data using rsync:
for user in $(ssh source@plesk “ls /var/qmail/mailnames/example.com/”); do
rsync -avz –chown=vmail:vmail –exclude ‘@attachments’ \
source@plesk:/var/qmail/mailnames/example.com/$user/ \
/var/vmail/example.com/$user/
done
Fix permissions:
chown -R vmail:vmail /var/vmail/example.com/
chmod -R u+rwx /var/vmail/example.com/
Reindex mailboxes so Mailcow recognizes all new data:

for user in $(ls /var/vmail/example.com/); do
doveadm -v index -u $user@example.com ‘*’
done

Restart Dovecot and verify mail access:
systemctl start dovecot

https://www.noiz.co.za/knowledgebase/5014/How-to-migrate-Maildir-emails-from-a-Plesk-server-to-an-ISPConfig-server.html

Any recommendations for large domains (55 mailboxes)?
Are these steps fully compatible with Mailcow’s directory and permissions model?
Is there anyone use this steps to migration ?

ETNyx

Batool Are these steps fully compatible with Mailcow’s directory and permissions model?

MC store mails encrypted, you will need encrypt your mails as well,.. see here.

My suggestion is use imapsync, MC have this build in UI for your convenience,…

DarkMatter

Hello,
The way I do migrations is by using imapsync. A bash script reads all mailbox info (source, user, pass >>> destination, user, pass) from a file and imapsync transfers over the messages via IMAP. This way I do not have to deal with possible issues. It might be slower though than rsync (I haven’t tested). But the best of all is that I don’t need to take offline any services.

Apart from all that, Gilles (the creator of imapsync) is a great person and I love imapsync 😎