How to get email from depreciated mail server (without FTP)

Question

OK... a client of mine has switch DNS and webmail hosts - They have their email set up on the new host and is ready to go. However, there are still a whole bunch of emails on their old server - they didnt back them up locally before they switched.

The old mail server is really minimalistic. It has CPanel but you can only access webmail and set up new email accounts from it. There is no file manager and you cannot access the mail via FTP. - Only via Roundcube or Squirrel Mail.

Does anyone know a way I can pull the email off this server via Roundcube or Squirrel Mail? Or any other way for that matter?

Answer 1

If you made a full backup of cPanel (as you should do routinely) and downloaded it or stored it remotely, then you can extract the backup on your computer or server, and then upload the mail folder in the home directory to the home directory of cPanel on the new host.

The mail directory should be located in /home/username, and you might have to rename the mail folder there first in order to replace it. You may also have to change the directory permissions on the new folder to user:mail

If you don't have a full backup of cPanel, then you can try to sync IMAP folders using a tool like imapsync. See this for more: How To Migrate Mailboxes Between IMAP Servers With imapsync

Note: The above assumes the old host is only accessible by IP since the DNS was switched to a new host. Otherwise, an IMAP client could just be configured to download mail for each account...