Would you like to transfer your domain, website and e-mail addresses from another provider to Hostpoint? We’ll show you how in this article – one step at a time.
Which Hostpoint products are right for me?
Hostpoint offers an extensive range of domain, web hosting and e-mail services:
- Domains: Discover the wide variety of domains and useful additional packages such as Domain Shield on our domain product page.
- Web hosting: You can choose between three different web hosting plans (Standard, Smart, Business).
- Website builder: Sites – Hostpoint’s modern and user-friendly website builder – is available in different versions (Starter/Limited/Full version) from as little as CHF 9.00 per month. With Smart and Business web hosting, you receive Sites Limited, which allows you to create a website with up to six pages – completely free of charge. The full version is suitable for more pages and functions. You can find all the information you need on the Sites product page.
- E-mail: All our web hosting services include an unlimited number of e-mail inboxes. But even if you don’t need web hosting, or if you require more storage space, you can still use our E-mail & Cloud Office products.
The following applies to all our products and services:
- Free support seven days a week (over the phone, by e-mail or over WhatsApp)
- Everything in Switzerland: our head office, all our employees, the entire server infrastructure and therefore your data too are located exclusively in Switzerland.
- Maximum performance thanks to 100% SSD web hosting
- Your data is backed up several times a day and is stored for up to 180 days.
You can select the products you need directly during the ordering process. However, you can also add extra products at any time in the Hostpoint Control Panel or on our website.
Domains, e-mail addresses and websites are usually transferred together, so this guide covers the transfer of all three services. If you do not want to use all of the services or transfer them to us, you can simply skip the relevant steps.
Domains
- To transfer domains to Hostpoint, you need a “transfer code” (also known as an “authorization code”) for each domain. You can find the transfer code in the Control Panel of your current provider, or you can obtain it directly by calling the relevant customer service.
- Order the domain on our website and enter the transfer code during the ordering process. Follow our domain transfer instructions to do this.
Info: Note: The transfer of .ch domains is completed within one working day. The transfer of other top-level domains (such as “.com” domains) can take up to five working days.
E-mail accounts
Create e-mail addresses
Once your domain has been successfully transferred, you can create your e-mail addresses with Hostpoint. To do this, log into the Hostpoint Control Panel and follow the instructions for creating e-mail addresses.
Switch mail server to Hostpoint
- Log into the Control Panel of your current DNS provider.
- Open the editor to modify your DNS zone and add the MX entries below. Remove all the other entries of the “MX” type.
Domain Type IN TTL Value/Host name @ MX IN 300 mx1.mail.hostpoint.ch @ MX IN 300 mx2.mail.hostpoint.ch - Add the TXT entry (SPF record) below. If another SPF record already exists, remove it.
Domain Type IN TTL Value/Host name @ TXT IN 300 v=spf1 redirect=spf.mail.hostpoint.ch
→ Your e-mails will now arrive in the newly created e-mail accounts over the Hostpoint mail servers. It can take up to three hours for this change to be published worldwide.
Transfer e-mails
Next, transfer all of the e-mails from your e-mail account with your previous provider to your new e-mail account with Hostpoint. Use the free e-mail migration service from Audriga to do so. The migration service only applies to e-mails, not to contacts (address books) and calendars.
At this point, we recommend that you back up all of the data (e-mails, calendar and contacts) in your e-mail program so that your calendar and contacts are also retained. Follow the backup instructions to do this.
Reconfigure e-mail program
Once all of your e-mails have been successfully transferred, set up your new Hostpoint e-mail addresses in your e-mail program. Use our e-mail wizard to do this. Then import your backed-up contacts and calendars back into your e-mail program.
Synchronize your contacts and calendar with Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook works perfectly for retrieving e-mails from Hostpoint servers. But, unfortunately, Outlook’s calendar and contact functionality is only limited to Microsoft servers. There are free add-ons so that you can still use your calendar and contacts in Outlook with your Hostpoint e-mail address. These act as “translators” and enable Outlook to work with international standards for calendars (CalDAV) and contacts (CardDAV), just as other e-mail programs do. Follow our CalDAV/CardDAV instructions to set up calendar and contact synchronization.
Website/web hosting
Website created with website builder
If you created your website with the website builder from a third-party provider, you can import it into Hostpoint’s “Sites” website builder. Follow the import instructions to do this. The menu structure, texts and images are automatically adopted during import. Dynamic content such as contact forms must be added to Sites at a later date. Unfortunately, not every website can be imported into Sites. If your website falls into this category, you can also simply build a new website with Sites.
To ensure that your existing website with your previous provider continues to work, first of all create your new website with Hostpoint on the test domain provided by the server (e.g. uvisovax.myhostpoint.ch). When you are satisfied with the website, you can publish it on your actual domain. Follow these steps:
- Transfer technical control of your domain to the Hostpoint Control Panel by switching the name servers to Hostpoint. Follow the instructions for changing name servers to do this. The switchover can take up to 48 hours.
→ As soon as the name server switchover is complete, your previous website will no longer be accessible. - Switch the website created with Sites over from the test domain (myhostpoint.ch) to the correct domain. Follow our guide on Sites to do this.
Website created with a CMS
If your website was created with a CMS such as WordPress, Joomla!, TYPO3 or Drupal, you can pack it into a file with the corresponding plugins and unpack it again with Hostpoint. As an example, you can find the WordPress guide.
After you have carried out all the steps according to the guide, you still need to switch the name servers to Hostpoint. Follow the instructions for changing name servers to do this. The switchover can take up to 48 hours.
Congratulations! You have transferred your domains, website and e-mail addresses from your previous provider to Hostpoint.
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