How to migrate email from Gmail and other services to Alpost

Transfer emails to another account: connect Gmail or another old mailbox and Alpost in Thunderbird over IMAP, copy the folders, forward new mail, move contacts.

How it works

We have no import button: the server does not fetch mail from another mailbox by itself. To migrate email from Gmail or any other service, you use a mail program on your computer. It connects to both mailboxes and copies messages from one to the other.

Below are the steps for Thunderbird, a free program. Any other program that can hold two IMAP accounts will do too.

Sending limits do not apply here: copying is not sending, and the messages do not pass through the outgoing server.

Program: Thunderbird, free, for Windows, macOS and Linux — from thunderbird.net
Alpost mailbox: address and password; with two-factor protection on — an app password from your account
Old mailbox: address and password; Yandex and Mail.ru may need an app password — see below
Space: a shared 1 GB for mail, Disk and website. Free space is shown in your account → “Summary” → “Space and limits”
Computer: must stay on while the copying runs

Will it fit

Check in your old service how much space the mail takes, and compare it with your free space here. A Gmail account of several gigabytes will not fit whole — move the folders you need, or the last few years of mail.

Leave some spare space. When the space runs out, new messages are not delivered and the sender gets a refusal. Thunderbird will then stop copying with the error “Quota exceeded”.

The 25 MB limit per message applies to sending and receiving. It does not apply to copying with a program: a large message is transferred as long as there is space.

Connect both mailboxes

Add two mail accounts in Thunderbird: Alpost first, then the old mailbox. Both must be IMAP accounts. With POP3 the folders are not visible and cannot be moved.

The table after the list shows what the old mailbox needs at each service.

Alpost: incoming mail — mail.alpost.ch, port 993, SSL/TLS; outgoing — mail.alpost.ch, port 587, STARTTLS; user name — the full address.
If two-factor protection is on, the program will not accept the main password. Create an app password: your account → “Security” → “App passwords”.
If the usual address stalls from Russia, use ru-mail.alpost.ch with the same ports.
Alpost setup is described in detail in the guide “Set up mail on a phone or in a mail program”.

Gmail: Thunderbird opens a Google sign-in window — sign in as usual. No app password is needed.
Yandex Mail: First allow mail programs: in Yandex Mail settings, open the section on email clients and allow IMAP access. Then sign in in the Yandex window. If Thunderbird asks for a password, create an app password in Yandex ID.
Mail.ru: If Thunderbird does not open a Mail.ru sign-in window and does not accept your usual password, create a password for an external application in the Mail.ru security settings and enter that.
Outlook.com and others: They connect the same way. If the usual password does not work, look in the service’s settings for IMAP access or an app password.

Copy the messages

Copy, do not move. Until you have checked that everything has arrived, the messages should stay in the old mailbox too.

The copying is done by your computer, not by the server. Do not switch it off or close Thunderbird until the move is finished. A large folder can take a long time.

In the Alpost mailbox, create folders with the same names as in the old one: right-click the mailbox → New Folder. Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Junk and Trash are already there.
Open a folder of the old mailbox and wait for the message list to load.
Select all messages: Ctrl+A, on a Mac Cmd+A.
Right-click the selection → “Copy To” → the Alpost mailbox → the folder you need.
Dragging with the mouse works too, but hold Ctrl, or Option on a Mac. Without the key, messages are moved and disappear from the old mailbox.
Copy a large folder in parts: if the connection drops, you will see where it stopped.
Check the result in webmail at https://mail.alpost.ch/ — the messages should be in the same folders.

Gmail: which folders not to copy

In Gmail, labels show up as folders, and one message can sit in several of them at once. Copy everything and the same message takes up space several times. Thunderbird gathers Gmail’s system folders in the [Gmail] group.

Copy Inbox, Sent Mail and your own labels.
“All Mail” holds every message in the account at once. Do not copy it together with the other folders.
“Important” and “Starred” are selections of the same messages. Skip them too.
“Spam” and “Trash” are usually not needed.
Messages you archived without a label are only in “All Mail”. If you need them, copy that folder alone instead of the others — and check its size first.

New mail: forwarding from the old mailbox

Only the messages that arrived up to today have been copied. For new mail to the old address to reach you as well, turn on forwarding in the old mailbox.

Gmail: “Settings” → “See all settings” → “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” → “Add a forwarding address”.
Yandex and Mail.ru: forwarding is set up in the message rules or filters.
The service usually sends a confirmation email to the new address. Open it in your Alpost mailbox and confirm.
For the first few days, look into the Junk folder: a forwarded message may land there.
A message over 25 MB will not arrive by forwarding — that is our limit per message. Move such messages with Thunderbird.
Forwarding is a temporary measure. Change your address wherever it matters: at the bank, in shops, on websites, with friends.

Contacts and calendar

Contacts move as a vCard file (.vcf) into “Contacts” on Disk. From there you can connect them to your phone — see the guide “Sync Disk with your phone and computer”.

Export the contacts from your old mail to a vCard file. In Gmail that is Google Contacts → “Export” → vCard format. Yandex and Mail.ru have an export or save-to-file option in the contacts section.
Open Disk at https://disk.alpost.ch/ and choose “Contacts” at the right of the header.
At the bottom of the left column, open “Contacts settings” → “Import contacts”, choose the address book, then “Select local file” and the .vcf file.
Disk “Contacts” accepts only vCard. If your old service gives you only CSV, import it into the Thunderbird address book and export it from there in vCard format.
The calendar moves the same way: export it as an .ics file, then on Disk open “Calendar” → “Calendar settings” → “Import calendar”.

What is not here

No server-side transfer. We do not fetch mail from another mailbox — not once, not on a schedule. Only your program copies.
Your old address does not move to us. It stays with the old service, and mail sent to it reaches us only through forwarding, for as long as forwarding is on.
No more than 1 GB of space. Mail, Disk and website share one limit, and there are no paid plans.
We make no backups. So it is better not to delete the old mailbox with the originals straight away.
No transfer of filters or the auto-reply. The old mailbox’s rules have to be set up again — see the guide “Filters, folders and the out-of-office reply”.