Need help moving FROM MIAB TO Proton Mail

I am getting to the point where I am not interested in maintaining a separate mail server, so I am trying to move from self hosted MIAB to Proton Mail. This is a daunting task already, as I have been running MIAB for 5 years, and this account is tied to some key stuff. I am at the step in Proton Mail setup of verifying my domain, which means I need to change my DNS from MIAB to my providers (GANDI) DNS so that I can upload a TXT record. When switching to Gandi’s LiveDNS I get this warning:“To avoid interrupting your domains when switching to LiveDNS, you will be asked to add your custom DNS records in addition to those required by LiveDNS. You may also use default records.” I know that I need to add some things to the custom DNS settings. From the MIAB setup guide it looks like there is a whole host of information I need to copy over from my MIAB admin pages External DNS settings. I’m not sure of the format or everything needs to be copied or how. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You wouldn’t want to copy any of your MIAB dns settings in gandi as that would redirect mail back to miab. Isn’t the point for you to get to proton mail?

You would need protons dns configurations added to your domain name in gandi.

I may be thinking about this wrong. But if I set DNS to Gandi LiveDNS, I still want mail to find my MIAB mailbox until I finish the migration. After that I will kill the MIAB mailbox droplet that I have at DO.

Yes then you would manually copy over the “external” dns entries in MiaB into gandi’s dns setting for your domain.

Thank you, I think I have it. If it doesn’t work I just set Gandi’s DNS back to external with my current settings and that should reset it correct?

Yes

Depending on “TTLs” set you have some time to get the entries finished before “missing mail” because the DNS entries will be cached in other dns systems until the TTL expires. Something to also look out for, even once you switch this if DNS hasn’t propagated it may also give you a false positive of it working.

Also you have the ability to download the DNS zone from MIAB and potentially import them into your providers. I dont use Gandi but I do use CloudFlare. CloudFlare allows you to just Import these files which makes it extremely easy to setup.

Perhaps consider switching from Gandi to CloudFlare but there’s a learning curve to this too…

Gandi is just fine. Minimum TTL (time to live in cached servers) is 300 seconds. I am sure nobody will send you a message in the next 5 minutes. Don’t worry you wont loose any messages. You can sync your MIAB IMAP folders for free with this tool. Mailbox Imapsync Online First make a folder in Proton IMPORT, then copy all folders from MIAB to PROTON IMPORT.
Or you can use Proton’s own import tool (other) but make sure you perform that before changing dns entries since you will not be able to login on MIAB. How to migrate to Proton using Easy Switch | Proton

May I ask you why are you moving? Do you send to gmail and yahoo and facing the 0.3% user reported spam measure introduced in February? Is it deliverability or a privacy/security issue? By the way Proton is Swiss based and they seem to care about privacy. How much will they charge you for own domain email there? I think their cheapest deal is 9.99 a month? Quite an expense?

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