How to Migrate from Rackspace to Office 365 (Microsoft 365)?

Note: Read this complete guide to learn how to migrate mailboxes from Rackspace to Office 365 effortlessly!

As we all know, Rackspace is a very large and well-known email hosting company that works with many companies. They help with email hosting, AWS, and Azure services or migration, among many other things. And they’ve been very widespread for a long period of time.

What are the benefits of hosting your email with Rackspace instead of your CSP that hosts directly in Office 365? However, now it is becoming more common for businesses to migrate from Rackspace to Office 365 as most users realize that they can get the same services at a lower cost elsewhere.

This article discusses how to migrate email from Rackspace to Office 365, as well as why it would be beneficial to do so. Moreover, we will also share what requirements are necessary to fulfill before performing the migration.

Migrate Mailboxes from Rackspace to Office 365: Why Do Users Want It?

By reading the below user query, you can understand why users want to migrate Rackspace email to Office 365:

Apart from the user scenario, there are other reasons which influence the users to migrate their email data, such as-

• A more productive workforce is enabled by three key features of Microsoft 365.
  1. Support for cross-platform environments
  2. Furthermore, it includes features for sharing and collaborating.
  3. Easy access to data from anywhere and at any time.
• Office 365 provides flexible deployment options based on an organization’s security needs and migration timeline.
• Users love choosing O365 because it provides predictable, manageable costs that make it easy to transition to a more flexible system.

Planning for a Rackspace to O365 Migration Process

However, before starting the migration process, a proper plan is one of the most important steps to move email to Office 365 securely. So, for that, just prepare the environment and have a backup plan to prevent high risk and data loss. So, just be sure to consider-

• Take a complete backup of important files.
• Delete unused mailbox files and folders with duplicate files.
• Make a list of the following items –
  1- User accounts, email addresses and passwords.
  2- Rackspace and Office 365 account details, browser and operating system used.
  3- All network settings, DNS configuration, MX records, etc.
  4- Keep all licensed plans on your current source server.
  5- Active Directory configuration and other details.
  6- Keep the all-important email list you want to move from Rackspace.
• Decide whether you want to migrate email from Rackspace to Office 365 in bulk or just some emails from a particular point in time.
• Also, give an estimate of the estimated time for this migration.
• Make sure to create required user mailboxes on Office 365 and assign licenses to them.
• Make sure you have good network capacity and bandwidth to migrate emails.
• Don’t forget to consider the message size limits on Microsoft 365.

Pre Migration Strategies to Transfer Emails

Once you planned everything as per the requirement, then make sure to do some pre migration activities for both Rackspace and Microsoft 365 accounts.

On Rackspace- 

• You must have administrative rights to migrate mailboxes from Rackspace to Office 365. Give copyright to the global administrator to migrate mailboxes on behalf of specific users.
• In case of absence of administrator user, create a new email account and grant full access permissions to each user account.Back up all your Rackspace user data, configuration, and messages.
• If there is a need to migrate multiple users without an administrator login, create a CSV file containing a list of all user mailboxes. For that, login to Rackspace > Select Account > User Management > Select Export Active User List to download the CSV file.
• If you plan to move Rackspace email to Office 365 with an IMAP connection, note the name of the server on Rackspace.

On Microsoft Office 365 :

• For that, create your target Office 365 tenant, see the tenant roadmap.
• Purchase the appropriate Office 365 licensing plan as needed.
• Before migrating email from Rackspace to Office 365, make sure you create mailboxes for the users and assign them the appropriate licenses.
• The global administrator account must have a valid and non-hidden mailbox on the source and target servers for email migration.
• Make sure you have the proper network and bandwidth requirements to get started with the migration.

Migrate Mailboxes from Rackspace to Office 365 – Professional Approach

There is no official migration solution provided by both email services to migrate Rackspace email to Office 365 accounts. So, you can just go for installing Pcvita IMAP to Office 365 Migration Tool.

This will allow you to migrate multiple emails from Rackspace source account with different functionalities. Also click on the below button to download this software for free. It also lets you move the required emails with the help of date filter option, so that the user can customize the process.

Download Now Purchase Now

Steps to Rackspace Email Migration to Office 365

Download and launch the tool on your computer system of supported version, run the tool and follow the steps-

• Initially, click IMAP as the source and Microsoft Office 365 as the destination. Finalize the workload selection procedure i.e., Allow Email Migration and Date Filter, and press Next.

• Rackspace isn’t available in the drop-down list, so choose Other. As a result, it will ask for Rackspace IMAP settings. Then, enter the required credentials and click Next.

• After that, enter your Office 365 Admin Email and Application ID. Verify your credentials and click Next.

• Next, you can see Users imported processing completed, click on Ok to confirm.

• After that, just select on Validate button to finish the validate procedure. After validating press OK.

• Now, select Start migration to begin the process to Migrate Mailboxes from Rackspace to Office 365. Then, the migration process is started successfully, please wait for completion, tap OK.

Key Features of Rackspace to Office 365 Migration Tool

The benefits of this professional tool are various, some of the features are as follows:

• Simple Application Programming Interface: The GUI of this tool is simple and unique, anyone with non-technical knowledge can easily perform the process of migrate mailboxes from Rackspace to Office 365.
• Maintains folder structure and folder hierarchy: The structure of your account data remains the same across the Rackspace to Office 365 migration tool. As it keeps all the folder hierarchy, email properties and attachments or inclined images same.
• Attached Attachment Files: Email attachments play an essential role in email messages as well as in the migration. This tool is specially designed to preserve all attachment files of your email messages.
• Migrate bulk Rackspace emails: You can use this tool to migrate Rackspace email to Office 365 in bulk within a second. Also, there is no need to use any lengthy process, use this tool for an instant migration.
• Preserve key elements during migration: Moreover, all key elements of Rackspace emails remain intact after the migration process. In short, all your CC, BCC, Unicode characters, embedded images, time stamps, dates, etc key elements will remain intact.
• Compatibility with Windows OS: In addition, this software can successfully work on latest versions of Windows operating system, i.e, Windows 2012 / 2016 Server, Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit) versions.

Common FAQs 

Q- How to migrate email from Rackspace to Office 365 in a quick way?

Steps for Rackspace to O365 migration process-

• Step 1- Download software on Windows PC.
• Step 2-Pick IMAP and Office 365 platforms.
• Step 3-Provide Rackspace details to validate.
• Step 4-Enter O365 details to authenticate.
• Step 5-Tap on the Start Migration to begin.

Q- What can I do for some Rackspace email migration to Office 365?

Steps for specific migration from Rackspace to O365: 

• Step 1-Download the tool on Windows.
• Step 2-Select both IMAP and Office 365 platforms
• Step 3-Check Email and set Date Filter.
• Step 4-Fill details to validate Rackspace account.
• Step 5-Enter Office 365 details & validate.
• Step 6-Click Start migration to begin.

Q- How to migrate Rackspace mailbox to Office 365 step by step?

There are two ways to migrate mailboxes from Rackspace to Office 365 (Microsoft 365). Either you can configure Rackspace account in Outlook and export the file to PST, then import PST to Office 365. This method will be beneficial if you have less number of mailboxes. But, in case of large mailboxes, simply use Pcvita tool to perform bulk migration in just a few steps.

Author’s Suggestion

So far, in this article, we have examined how you can easily migrate mailboxes from Rackspace to Office 365. So, to keep the process safe and secure, use the Rackspace to O365 migration tool mentioned above. As this software is beneficial for bulk email migration and can also be used for specific email migration. So, start your migration now by downloading it for free.