The short version — Migadu is one of the most honest companies in email hosting, and thousands of people are happy there. The reasons people leave are specific and mechanical: the $19 Micro plan's 20 outgoing messages per day cap (and its matching inbound cap), the $90 jump to make sending usable, and deliverability that Migadu itself declines to guarantee. If those are your reasons, this guide moves you out in an evening — history, folders and read state intact.
First, credit where it's due
We compete with Migadu, so read this knowing that. But their /procon page — a pricing page that lists reasons not to buy — set a standard for honesty this industry still hasn't matched, their per-domain admin panel is genuinely excellent, and "unlimited domains and mailboxes" on every plan is real. If Migadu works for you, stay. This page is for the people for whom it stopped working.
Why people actually leave
Documented, not vibes:
- The sending caps. Micro ($19/yr) allows 20 outgoing messages per day; a usable allowance (100/day) starts at Mini — $90/yr. For anyone who actually corresponds, $19 is the brochure price and $90 is the real one.
- The caps cut both ways. The same quota architecture applies inbound — one user documented an attacker triggering ~200 password-reset emails in 15 minutes, exhausting his daily receive quota: a receive-side denial of service (muffin.ink review, 2026-03).
- Deliverability is explicitly best-effort. Their own /procon says: "We give no guarantees your messages will reach recipient's inbox." Reports of first sends landing in Gmail's spam folder go back years (HN thread).
- Operational wobbles. A February 2024 migration left mailboxes appearing empty for around a day (HN thread); one long-term customer measured "two nines" of MX uptime before leaving; the status page has been observed missing real downtime (muffin.ink).
- Geography surprise. Migadu is a Swiss company, but every service hostname resolves to OVH datacenters in France (european-alternatives.eu). Not a scandal — but if "Swiss-hosted" was part of your reasoning, it isn't that.
And one structural point rather than a complaint: Migadu's model is many mailboxes under an admin panel. If what you actually want is all your domains' mail in one inbox, you've been assembling that yourself out of forwards and identities.
Before you start: a 10-minute checklist
- Inventory your addresses. In Migadu's admin, list every mailbox, alias, rewrite and forwarding you've configured, per domain. Migrations lose the forgotten alias, not the main mailbox.
- Note your renewal date. Mail service is prepaid; time the switch so you're not donating a year.
- Confirm you can log into each mailbox directly (address + that mailbox's password — not your admin login). The migration copies mail over IMAP, per mailbox.
- Don't cancel anything yet. Migadu stays fully functional during everything below.
The migration, step by step
The order matters; each step is reversible until step 4.
1. Create the destination and verify your domains. On MailHow: add each domain in Settings → Domains — verification happens via a DNS TXT record and doesn't touch your mail flow. (On another provider: same idea, different buttons. This playbook is provider-agnostic; the complete guide has the general version.)
2. Copy your mail across. Settings → Import → pick the Migadu preset (imap.migadu.com, already configured), enter the mailbox address and its password, and start the copy. It's one-way — Migadu's mailbox is never modified — and it preserves folders, read state and dates. Big mailboxes take hours; the importer shows progress and you can keep using everything meanwhile. Repeat per mailbox; on MailHow they can all land in the one inbox, with each domain still sending from its own addresses.
3. Recreate your routing. Aliases, catch-alls and any forwarding rules — recreate them at the destination while looking at the inventory from the checklist. This is deliberately manual: it's also the moment you discover which of those seventeen aliases you actually use.
4. Switch DNS. Replace Migadu's MX, SPF, DKIM and verification records with the new provider's. On MailHow with a connected registrar this is one click (and our SPF handling merges into an existing record rather than overwriting it — if other tools send as your domain, that matters). Manual DNS: lower TTLs the day before, swap the records in one sitting, and delete Migadu's MX records — stragglers cause split delivery.
5. Wait two weeks, then re-import once and cancel. DNS caches drain slowly. Keep the Migadu account alive to catch the trickle, run the import one final time to sweep it, export nothing-forgotten, then cancel.
What changes, concretely
| Migadu Micro ($19/yr) | Migadu Mini ($90/yr) | MailHow ($29/yr) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sending | 20/day | 100/day | 100/hour — all limits published |
| Receiving | daily quota (see above) | daily quota | free, forever — receiving is never metered |
| Domains | unlimited, as separate mailboxes | unlimited | up to 5, all in one inbox |
| Hosting | France (OVH), Swiss company | France (OVH) | Germany |
| DNS setup | manual records | manual records | one-click via connected registrars, SPF merged |
| Deliverability stance | "no guarantees" (their words) | same | monitored blocklists, DMARC ingestion, published sending caps that protect the IP |
Fair notes in the other direction: Migadu's unlimited-domains is truly unlimited (we stop at 5 on the free tier), their admin panel is deeper than ours if you manage mailboxes for other people, and they've been at this for a decade.
Questions from Migadu switchers
Do I lose my folder structure or read state? No — the IMAP copy preserves folders, flags and dates. What it copies is mail; server-side rules (rewrites, Sieve) are recreated by hand in step 3.
Can I move five domains into literally one inbox? Yes — that's the product. Each domain keeps its own sending identity; reading happens in one place, with per-domain filtering when you want it.
What about my Migadu CalDAV calendar? Migadu's CalDAV is minimal and famously under-documented; export any calendars/contacts from your client app directly (most apps can export .ics/.vcf) rather than hoping a server-side copy exists.
Is $29 sustainable, or will I be migrating again in two years? The honest answer any provider owes you: our pricing model is public — receiving is free because storage is cheap; sending is paid because deliverability work isn't. We publish every limit and our backup restore drills run on a schedule, not as a slogan. Judge us on the same terms this guide judged Migadu.
More context: MailHow vs Migadu for the full side-by-side, and the complete guide to email on your own domain for the fundamentals.