Overview
This article describes various options on how to back up email hosted at DreamHost.
How to back up DreamHost email
The following sections offer various options to back up your DreamHost email.
Using a mobile device is not recommended for any of the options mentioned in this article.
Option 1 — Using the DreamHost account backup service
This option uses the panel's account backup service to back up all of your email addresses in a compressed format to your computer.
To download your mail backup file:
- Follow the instructions in this article to create an account backup. All of your account's username, databases, and email addresses are downloaded as compressed .tar.gz files.
- Locate your email address in the list.
- Download the file to your computer by clicking the email address link, or via SSH.
-
Decompress the file on your computer.
- The decompressed mail data is in a Maildir format, which is not a readable file on its own.
- Follow the instructions in this article to add an .eml extension to the files. This allows your email client to read them.
Option 2 — Moving emails to local/offline storage
This option uses an email client to store emails in a local/offline folder (on your computer) while still viewing them within the email client.
Please note the following before using a local/offline option:
- This process moves emails from DreamHost's mail servers to your computer.
- Emails that are stored locally (on your computer) use the available disk space on your computer.
- DreamHost's webmail interface does not provide an option to manage email storage locally.
To create a local folder:
- Log into your email within your email client.
- Create a local/offline folder. The steps to create a local folder vary depending on the email client you're using:
- Apple Mail — Create a local folder in On My Mac.
- Outlook — This does not include an option to create a local location except in the Mac version of this application.
- Highlight the emails you wish to move to local storage.
- Drag-and-drop the highlighted emails into the local folder within your mail client.
Most email clients also have a 'move to' option, which moves emails to the new location instead of creating a copy of them.
- Check the local folder to confirm the emails were moved into it. They will also no longer appear in the original email folder since they were removed from DreamHost's mail servers.
Option 3 — Backing up using a POP connection
This option uses an email client configured as a POP connection to automatically download emails to your computer.
Please note the following when using a POP connection.
- A POP connection downloads email ONLY from the Inbox folder.
- To download email outside of the Inbox, the contents of other folders must first be moved to the Inbox. This includes folders such as old-messages, Sent, Drafts, and any other folders outside of the Inbox folder.
- Email clients include the option to 'Keep a copy of email on the server'. This results in the same message being stored locally AND on DreamHost's email servers. It is advised to disable this option to avoid having the same email stored in two locations.
- After downloading, the Inbox appears empty when logging in using an IMAP client or webmail. It will only be accessible through the email client that used POP to download it.
Configuring a POP connection
- Configure the email address within an email client using a POP connection.
- Disable the option to 'Keep a copy of email on the server'.
- Download your messages from the Inbox folder. Move additional emails from other folders into the Inbox folder (one at a time) to download their contents.
Option 4 — Exporting emails using webmail
DreamHost's webmail service has an export option that allows you to download all highlighted emails in a folder to your computer. This allows you to keep the original email in the webmail folder while downloading a copy of the emails.
Please note the following when using webmail:
- You can only download email from a single folder at a time. It is not possible to export the entire mailbox at once using webmail.
- The export limit for a webmail backup is 50MB. For larger folders, you can instead use one of the other options listed on this page. Otherwise, you may need to export in smaller batches for heavier folders.
- Log in to webmail.
- Select a folder.
- Highlight emails in the folder by clicking the Select button (the up arrow icon) at the top of the page. This highlights all emails.
- On the top right, click the More button (the ellipsis icon).
- Select one of the following options from the dropdown to download your emails.
- Source (.eml) — downloads a single email as an .eml file type. This option is only available when downloading a single email.
- Mbox format (.zip) — downloads a .zip folder that contains an .mbox file that has all of the highlighted emails within it. The .mbox file contains the headers and contents of all of the highlighted emails in a single file. This option is for downloading more than one email.
- Maildir format (.zip) — downloads a .zip folder that contains the emails in a Maildir format. The Maildir file contains each email as its own file and must converted to an .eml file in order to view it. See this article to learn how to add .eml extensions to file names. This option is also for downloading more than one email.
- Repeat these steps for additional folders.
When finished, it's highly recommended that you then delete the emails within webmail so they are removed from the mail server.
Option 5 — Exporting emails using an email client
Email clients such as Mac Mail and Outlook include an option to directly export email. See the following links for more information:
- Apple Mail
-
Mircosoft Outlook
Outlook's export feature saves the backup as a .pst file type, which is proprietary to Outlook. Other email clients do not support this file type.
Exporting emails from another host
Contact your current email host to confirm what options are available to export your emails from their system.
Once exported, you can then use the instructions in the following articles to import the emails into your DreamHost account:
- Import another host's email into DreamHost
- Copying your old host's email to your DreamHost email account