Leaving Purelymail: The Complete Migration Guide (2026)

The short version — Purelymail is the best $10 in email hosting, run by people honest enough to list their own weaknesses on their website. People leave for reasons Purelymail itself half-admits: a rough stretch of four incidents between November 2025 and March 2026, a ~4-person team behind everyone's mailbox, US-only hosting with EU repeatedly requested and still just "under consideration", Roundcube webmail, and DNS setup that means seven manual records per domain. If you've decided the savings no longer cover the risk, here's the move — one evening, nothing lost.

Respect first

Purelymail's pricing page includes a self-written list of reasons not to choose them ("no 24/7 support staff", interface "not always intuitive"). That kind of honesty is rare and it's why their technical users defend them fiercely. Nothing below is a gotcha — most of it comes from their own status page and docs. If $10/year with eyes open is the deal you want, it's a fair deal. This guide is for when your risk calculus changes.

Why people actually leave

• The incident run. Between November 2025 and March 2026, Purelymail's own news feed records four significant events: an EC2 storage failure, an emergency database migration, DKIM signing issues, and a brute-force attack (news.purelymail.com). Each was handled transparently — and together they're why "so cheap I know it can't last" is a recurring sentiment among their own fans (HN, Jan 2026).
• The bus factor. The founder sold the service in March 2025 (health reasons); the team was roughly four people as of early 2026. Everyone's mail, four people, thin margins — that's the trade underneath the price (HN discussion).
• US-only, EU declined so far. Hosting is AWS us-east-1. EU hosting is a documented user request that remains "under consideration" (roadmap post, Dec 2025). If GDPR jurisdiction or EU data residency matters to you, it isn't on offer.
• Setup and interface friction. Their docs answer "can setup be automated?" with a plain "Unfortunately, no" — DNS means seven manual records per domain (their domain docs). Webmail is Roundcube. Their own docs also acknowledge historic deliverability trouble with Outlook on their self-managed IPs.

Notice what's not on the list: sending limits. Purelymail's ~3,000/day default allowance is generous — if raw sending volume is your main criterion, they're genuinely hard to beat at the price.

Before you start

1. List your domains, users and routing rules. Purelymail's per-domain routing (catch-alls, rules, Sieve scripts) lives server-side — inventory it now; Sieve doesn't migrate automatically anywhere.
2. If you use two-factor sign-in, create an app password in Purelymail's account settings — the IMAP copy authenticates per mailbox.
3. Check your credit balance. Purelymail bills from a prepaid balance; there's nothing to time precisely, but know what's left.
4. Cancel nothing yet.

The migration, step by step

1. Create the destination and verify your domains. On MailHow: Settings → Domains → add each, verify via TXT record. Live mail is untouched.

2. Copy your mail. Settings → Import → the Purelymail preset (imap.purelymail.com, pre-configured), address + password (or app password), start. One-way, folders/flags/dates preserved, source untouched. Repeat per user; on MailHow every domain's mail can land in one inbox with per-domain sending identities intact.

3. Recreate routing. Catch-alls and forwards are checkbox work at the destination. If you wrote custom Sieve scripts at Purelymail, translate the ones you still need (MailHow's filter rules cover the common cases — file-into-folder, mark, forward — and compile to Sieve server-side; hand-written Sieve edge cases may need rethinking).

4. Switch DNS — and enjoy this step. Where Purelymail setup meant seven manual records per domain, the destination should generate everything for you (on MailHow: one click with a connected registrar, including merging SPF with any existing record instead of overwriting it — and DKIM keys that rotate automatically afterwards). Delete Purelymail's MX and related records once the new ones are in; leftover MX records cause split delivery.

5. Grace period, sweep, close. Two weeks for DNS caches to drain while Purelymail catches stragglers, one final re-import to sweep, then close the account and export nothing in a hurry ever again.

What changes, concretely

That sending row is honest in both directions: Purelymail allows more volume; our lower cap is deliberate IP-reputation protection. High-volume senders should read it as a real difference, not spin.

Questions from Purelymail switchers

Is my mail at risk while I migrate? No — the import is read-only against Purelymail, and DNS switches instantly once you're ready. The two systems run in parallel until you delete the old MX records.

I chose Purelymail for price. Why pay 3×? If $10 with the documented trade-offs still fits your risk tolerance — stay; that's a rational choice. The $19/year difference buys EU hosting, one-click DNS, one-inbox-many-domains, and an operator whose recovery drills you can read about. That's the whole pitch; you're qualified to price it.

What about my at-rest encryption? Purelymail's password-derived at-rest encryption is a real feature (with their documented search-index caveat). We're straightforward about our equivalent: TLS everywhere in transit, encrypted disks at rest, and no content indexing beyond what search requires — details on /security. If cryptographic at-rest-per-user is your hard requirement, verify any destination against it explicitly.

Sieve scripts? Bring the logic, not the files: recreate the rules you actually use in the destination's filter UI. Years of accumulated Sieve usually distills to five rules that matter.

Side-by-side: MailHow vs Purelymail. Fundamentals: the complete guide to email on your own domain.