Migrate GoDaddy Email to Google Workspace: Full Walkthrough

You're moving email off GoDaddy onto Google Workspace. The reason is almost always one of two: the cost of GoDaddy's email products has crept up year over year, or you've outgrown GoDaddy Workspace Email's feature set and want real Workspace. Whichever it is, the mechanics depend on which GoDaddy email product you have, because GoDaddy resells multiple things under the same brand. This guide identifies the product, walks through the IMAP migration mechanics for each variant, and covers the MX cutover.

Identify the source product first#

This is the step most engineers skip and regret. GoDaddy sells three different email products that all look the same from the outside:

GoDaddy Workspace Email (also called "Workspace Webmail" or sometimes just "Email"). This is GoDaddy's in-house mail product, not related to Google Workspace despite the confusing name. IMAP server is imap.secureserver.net. This is the cheapest and slowest of the three.

GoDaddy-resold Microsoft 365. Sold under various GoDaddy SKU names but it's actually Office 365 / Exchange Online underneath. IMAP server is outlook.office365.com. Migration shape is the same as any Office 365 migration.

GoDaddy-resold Google Workspace. GoDaddy resells real Google Workspace too. IMAP is imap.gmail.com. If this is your source, you're not really "moving off GoDaddy", you're transferring the Workspace contract or moving to a fresh Workspace tenant.

To check which product you have, sign into your GoDaddy account, go to Email & Office, and look at the product name shown. If it says "Workspace Email" you have product 1. If it says "Microsoft 365" you have product 2. If it says "Google Workspace" you have product 3.

The rest of this guide focuses on product 1 (GoDaddy Workspace Email) because it's the most common and the most painful to migrate. If you have product 2, follow the Office 365 source migration guide instead. If you have product 3, it's a Workspace-to-Workspace transfer, a different shape entirely.

What carries over from GoDaddy Workspace Email#

Be realistic about the limits.

Messages, headers, attachments, dates, read/unread state, and folder hierarchy come across over IMAP. This is the main thing and it works.

Flagged messages survive because IMAP exposes \Flagged and Gmail's star equivalent maps to it.

Calendar and contacts do not move with mail migration. GoDaddy Workspace Email's calendar and contacts are tied to their webmail and don't have clean export. You'll lose calendar history; plan around this. Contacts can sometimes be exported as CSV from the GoDaddy webmail.

No address book sync. If users have years of contacts built up in GoDaddy's address book, they'll need to export and re-import them manually.

No filters or rules. GoDaddy's filtering system is webmail-specific and doesn't translate to Gmail filters. Users will recreate.

Aliases and forwarding rules in GoDaddy don't move automatically. Capture these manually before migration so you can recreate them in Workspace.

Source-side preparation#

GoDaddy Workspace Email has a few quirks to handle.

Verify IMAP is enabled per account#

GoDaddy Workspace Email has IMAP enabled by default for paid plans, but some legacy plans require enabling it explicitly. Sign into GoDaddy webmail and check the account settings, or look in the admin console under Email Setup.

Capture user list with passwords#

GoDaddy Workspace Email uses each user's regular password for IMAP authentication. No app password system. You'll need each user's actual password to migrate their mail. For a multi-user migration, this usually means: ask each user, or have the admin reset passwords to known values, migrate, then have users change passwords back afterward.

This is unusual compared to Gmail or Office 365 (which both have app passwords), and it's the single biggest annoyance of migrating off GoDaddy Workspace Email.

Note IMAP throttling#

GoDaddy Workspace Email throttles aggressively. Concurrent IMAP connections per user are limited to 2 or 3. Connection idle timeout is short, around 10 minutes. Throughput per connection is around 1 to 2 messages per second.

Capture per-mailbox baseline#

Before any migration, document per-mailbox sizes. GoDaddy webmail shows the total mailbox size in the user's settings. Note this per user, plus a rough item count if you can get it.

Destination-side preparation on Google Workspace#

The Google side.

Verify or set up Workspace#

If you already have Workspace, skip this. If you're new to Workspace, sign up at workspace.google.com. Verify your domain ownership through Google's verification process (TXT record, HTML file, or similar). Note: you don't change MX records yet; verification is just proving ownership.

Provision destination users#

Create users matching every GoDaddy mailbox you're migrating. Use the bulk-create CSV in the Workspace Admin Console for under 200 users, or the Directory API for larger numbers. Users have @yourdomain.com addresses that mirror the GoDaddy source.

Allocate sufficient storage#

Workspace Business Standard pools 2 TB across the org. Business Plus pools 5 TB. Enterprise tiers are higher. If you're migrating 30 mailboxes averaging 5 GB each (150 GB), Business Standard has plenty of headroom.

Enable IMAP for destination users (if using a desktop tool)#

In the Workspace Admin Console under Apps → Gmail → End User Access, ensure IMAP access is allowed. Each user can enable IMAP in Gmail settings, or you can do it administratively.

Generate Google app passwords or set up OAuth2#

For desktop migration tools, you have two options. Per-user app passwords at myaccount.google.com/apppasswords (requires 2-step verification enabled per user). Or OAuth2 if your migration tool supports it.

For broader Workspace destination prep, see the Workspace migration guide.

Migration approach#

Two paths.

Google's Data Migration Service. Free, runs in Google's infrastructure. Configure GoDaddy as an IMAP source in the Workspace Admin Console under Data Migration. Provide per-user credentials. Start. Good for small estates (under 30 users) and small mailboxes (under 5 GB each). Limited reporting, no pause-resume.

Desktop IMAP migration tool. Runs on your workstation, connects to GoDaddy IMAP for each user, appends to Workspace via Gmail IMAP. Mailbox Taxi is in this category. Better visibility, per-folder counts, and ability to pause and resume across days.

For the general IMAP-to-Gmail pattern that applies to either path, see IMAP to Gmail.

Step-by-step#

1. Test GoDaddy IMAP credentials for one user

   Before involving the migration tool, verify one source credential. In Thunderbird, add an account with host imap.secureserver.net, port 993, SSL, full GoDaddy email as username, user's regular password as password. Confirm folders list. If you get AUTHENTICATIONFAILED, double-check the password and confirm IMAP is enabled for that account.

2. Test Workspace IMAP credentials for the destination user

   Same test for the destination. In Thunderbird, add an account with host imap.gmail.com, port 993, SSL, full Workspace email as username, app password as password. Confirm folders list. If it fails, regenerate the app password or check that IMAP is enabled in the user's Gmail settings.

3. Configure source and destination in Mailbox Taxi

   Add GoDaddy Workspace Email as the IMAP source with the verified credentials. Add Workspace as the IMAP destination with the verified app password. The tool will enumerate folders on both sides and present them for mapping.

4. Map system folders

   GoDaddy Workspace Email folders are Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Bulk, Trash. Workspace (Gmail) system folders are Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Spam, Trash, plus All Mail. Map Sent to Sent, Drafts to Drafts, Bulk to Spam (or exclude), Trash to Trash. User folders carry across with hierarchy preserved.

5. Run a pilot with two or three mailboxes

   Pick a mix: one small, one medium, one with deep folder structure if you have such users. Migrate to completion. Then verify in Gmail: dates correct, attachments open, folder structure preserved, no obvious duplicates. Open the migrated mail in Gmail web and Gmail mobile to confirm both work.

6. Run the bulk migration in waves

   Break users into waves of 10 to 25. Start each wave off-hours. GoDaddy Workspace Email throttles to 2 to 3 connections per user, and per-IP limits are also tight. Limit your migration tool's overall concurrency to 4 to 6 connections across all users running at once.

7. Monitor for connection drops and resume

   GoDaddy's IMAP server drops idle connections after about 10 minutes and occasionally drops active connections for no obvious reason. A good migration tool retries automatically. Watch the tool's progress to make sure it's making forward progress, not just retrying the same messages.

8. Verify each wave against baseline

   After each wave, compare per-mailbox message counts in Gmail against your baseline. Variance under 1 percent is usually deduplication. Larger variance needs investigation: a delta run, or a check of which folders dropped messages.

9. Cutover MX records to Google

   Once all mailboxes are verified, lower MX TTLs to 300 seconds 48 hours ahead. On cutover day, change MX records to Google's MX endpoints. For more on MX record mechanics, see the MX record reference. Wait for DNS propagation, then run a final delta to catch mail that arrived at GoDaddy during cutover.

GoDaddy's throttle behavior#

Specific notes from real migrations.

GoDaddy Workspace Email limits IMAP connections per user to 2 or 3. From a single IP across many users, the cap is around 10 to 15 total connections.

Throughput per connection is around 1 to 2 messages per second for messages under 1 MB. Larger messages slow proportionally. Expect 1 to 2 GB per hour per workstation as a realistic figure.

Connection idle timeout is around 10 minutes. Connections need active commands every few minutes or they get dropped.

Per-message size limit on the IMAP path is around 25 MB. Larger messages fail to fetch with various error responses. Most mailboxes have a handful of these and you'll need to handle them manually.

Sometimes the server simply stops responding for 30 to 60 seconds and then resumes. A good migration tool waits this out without giving up. If your tool is too aggressive on retries, you'll see worse throughput.

After cutover#

Standard cutover hygiene.

Forward GoDaddy to Workspace for 30 days. In GoDaddy webmail per user, configure forwarding to the Workspace address. This catches anything that lands at GoDaddy despite MX changes.

Send users a reconfiguration guide. Specific steps: reconfigure phone mail apps with Workspace IMAP/SMTP. Update bookmarks. Recreate signatures and filters in Gmail. Re-import their address book if they had contacts in GoDaddy.

Keep GoDaddy email active for 60 days. Don't cancel the GoDaddy email product immediately. Old contacts and services with stale MX records surface during the first month or two. Keeping GoDaddy active serves as your forwarding origin and emergency fallback.

Archive GoDaddy before final cancellation. Before the GoDaddy email product expires, do one final migration pass to catch any forwarded mail. Then take a full export of the GoDaddy mailbox to MBOX or PST and store on cold backup.

If Office 365 is your alternate destination, GoDaddy to Office 365 covers that path. For pure GoDaddy to personal Gmail (no Workspace), see GoDaddy to Gmail. The general IMAP to Gmail pattern applies whenever you're moving from any IMAP source to Gmail or Workspace.

Common errors#

AUTHENTICATIONFAILED from GoDaddy: wrong password or IMAP not enabled for that account. GoDaddy doesn't have app passwords; the regular password should work.

AUTHENTICATIONFAILED from Workspace: app password missing or wrong, or 2-step verification not enabled (Gmail requires it before app passwords work).

Too many simultaneous connections from GoDaddy: lower concurrency to 2 to 3 per user and 4 to 6 total.

Connection unexpectedly closed from GoDaddy: idle timeout or random server-side disconnect. Migration tool should retry automatically.

Message too large for destination: usually means GoDaddy can't fetch a message over its size limit, not a Gmail-side limit. Save the attachment separately if possible and skip the message.

STARTTLS handshake failed: try port 993 with implicit SSL instead of port 143 with STARTTLS. GoDaddy's IMAP STARTTLS support is sometimes flaky; SSL-from-the-start is more reliable.