There are many good reasons to move away from Gmail and migrate to an IMAP based email provider: privacy concerns, reduced dependency from Google, better compatibility or simply cost reduction. Whatever your reasons, this tutorial explains in easy-to-follow steps how you can migrate your emails from Gmail to IMAP.
✅ This tutorial is suitable for beginners and advanced users. Easy set up – 100 % risk free!
Your Advantages:
✅ Automatic Label to Folder Conversion: Your Gmail labels are converted to folders.
✅ 100 % Safe: Risk free migration, no data loss possible!
✅ Zero Downtime: No cutover or transition time.
✅ Fully Automated: MailJerry handles everything.
✅ Full Data Integrity: No email data is changed.100% Data Integrity: All email data remains unchanged and accurate.
Summary: How to Migrate from Gmail to IMAP:
🎁 Bonus: Tips Our tips for a smooth Gmail to IMAP migration.
➡️ Deep dive: Learn how to efficiently convert multi-label messages to IMAP.
And in case you still have any questions, our FAQs are here to help!
Step by Step:Easily Migrate from Gmail to IMAP
Checklist:
What You’ll Need
Before jumping into the migration, let’s make sure that you have all necessary data at hand! This is what you need to migrate your emails from Gmail to IMAP:
1️⃣ Your Gmail credentials (username + password)
2️⃣ Your IMAP credentials (username + password)
3️⃣ The address of your IMAP mail server
4️⃣ MailJerry – your Gmail to IMAP migration tool
✅ Don’t know your IMAP server address? Have a look at our list of email settings to find the correct address.
If your hosting company is not included in the list, simply ask your provider for the IMAP mail server address!
Step 01:
Set Up the Migration
Now let’s start the setup of your IMAP migration! In this step, we’ll connect your IMAP and Gmail account so that you can migrate your email data directly between providers, no cumbersome down- and upload necessary 😉.
1. Start MailJerry and click on “New Migration”.
2. In the section called “Existing Address”, select “Gmail” as account type.
3. Enter your Gmail / Google Workspace address in the field username and click on “Connect with Google Account”.
4. A pop up opens: Follow the steps to sign-in with your Google account.
5. When asked for permissions, grant the requested permissions by clicking on “Continue”.
6. Now head over to the section for “New Address”. Here, select “IMAP” as account type.
7. Enter your username (usually your email address) and your password in the corresponding fields.
8. In the field “mailserver”, enter your IMAP mail server address
❓ Are you wondering what the option “Ignore Google Bandwidth Limits” does? To find out if it’s a good idea to enable it, have a look at our migration tips.
➡️ You now added both accounts. In the next step, we’ll verify your settings and preview the Gmail to IMAP migration.
Step 02:
Preview Your Gmail to IMAP Migration
Now let’s check if everything is set up correctly for the migration:
9. Click on “Check Settings” and wait until the check has finished. The software will connect with both accounts and gather all necessary data so you can safely preview your planned migration.
💡 If your Gmail mailbox is very large, it might take some time to gather all necessary information. Please be patient and wait until you’re forwarded to the preview page!
10. After both mailboxes were checked successfully, you’ll see a preview of the planned migration. Here, you can verify which data is included in the migration and optionally change the migration strategy for multi-label messages.
💡 To learn more about label to folder conversion, check out our deep dive. For small and medium sized mailboxes (up to 2 GB), it’s usually recommended to stick with the default settings.
Step 03:
Run the Migration from Gmail to IMAP
Now let’s start the Gmail to IMAP migration!
11. On the preview page, click on “Start Your Migration”. MailJerry will migrate all Gmail messages to your new IMAP account and converts your Gmail label into IMAP folders.
✅ While the migration is running, you can use your email accounts to receive or send emails. All changes in your Gmail account can be synced after the initial migration by running a delta migration or through enabling the auto sync.
⚠️ Please avoid large structural changes in your mailbox while the migration is running (e.g. cleanup, moving lots of messages and / or restructuring labels)!
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Bonus:MailJerry’s Tips to Successfully Move Away from Gmail
Tip 01:
How to Deal With Gmail Bandwidth Limitations
Google restricts the daily amount of data you can upload to or download from Gmail. These bandwidth limitations usually don’t play a big part in everyday email usage, but can slow down progress when migrating data from or to Gmail.
💡 For your Gmail to IMAP migration, the daily Gmail download limit is the relevant key figure.
It currently lies at max. 2,500 MB of email data per day.
As soon as you’ve hit this limit, the migration will stall down and progress will be very, very slow until the limit is reset 24 hours later. Even though there is very little you can do against this, here are two tips to facilitate the migration of large mailboxes:
⏰ Pro Tip 01: Plan Enough Time
If you migrate a mailbox of multiple GBs, plan enough time for the transition. Set up and start your migration and simply wait until the migration has finished. It’s absolutely no problem if the migration runs several hours or even multiple days. MailJerry will migrate your data completely and reliably!
📉 Pro Tip 02: Reduce Additional Bandwidth Activity
While your migration is running, make sure that no other tools or software (e.g. email clients, backup tools…) are active. Every activity on your mailbox will reduce the available bandwidth and slow down progress even more. So best to disable everything before starting the migration!
💥 Experimental: Ignore Gmail Bandwidth Limits
When connecting with your Gmail account (step 01), you see the option “Ignore Google Bandwidth Limits”. By enabling this option, MailJerry will ignore Gmails bandwidth limitations and try to migrate your Gmail data to IMAP as quickly as possible.
⚠️ But be warned: By doing so, be prepared that your migration will very likely break mid-process. If this is the case, you need to start a new migration, this time not enabling the “ignore bandwidth limits” option. The mailbox check will take longer this time, as MailJerry has to identify which messages were already migrated, but you won’t lose the progress you made so far.
Our recommendation: Only enable this option if you need to migrate a very large mailbox and are under time-constraints. In all other scenarios, it’s best to ignore the bandwidth limits option and grant your migration the time necessary to complete.
Tip 02:
Don’t Enable the Migration Cache
We developed the migration cache to speed up migrations, and especially delta syncs, and usually, it’s a good idea to enable it. However, when migrating from Gmail to IMAP, don’t enable the cache!
Because of the special architecture Gmail created for its labels, the migration cache will create duplicates and unnecessarily bloat your new IMAP inbox.
Tip 03:
Automatically Sync Changes
After the migration, it’s very likely that you’ll still receive emails in your Gmail account. To sync those changes to your new IMAP account, simply enable the auto sync. The auto sync performs a delta migration every three hours and syncs your Gmail account with your new IMAP mailbox.
How to Enable the Auto-Sync:
1. In MailJerry, open the “Overview” and click on your migration.
2. Scroll down to “Settings” and enable “Synchronize emails for 10 Days”.
➡️ MailJerry will now check your Gmail account for changes every three hours and automatically migrate those over to IMAP. If you’d like to sync your account right away, simply click on the “Sync Now” button.
💡 Need to keep your account synced longer than 10 days? Enable the backup mode and choose between a daily, monthly or weekly interval to regularly perform a delta migration.
Deep Dive:Efficiently Convert Multi-Label Messages
As a Gmail / Google Workspace user, you already know that Gmail works with labels. So when migrating to IMAP, those labels need to be converted to IMAP folders. The label to folder conversion is a straightforward process for messages with one label.
For messages with multiple labels, however, you need to decide how to migrate those additional labels. To do so, you have two options:
Option A: Migrate Duplicates
If a message contains two or more labels, a folder is created for the first label and the original message is moved into this folder. For all subsequent labels, a copy of the message is created and moved into the respective folder(s).
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| ✅ Mailbox “feels” the same as old mailbox | ⚠️ IMAP inbox contains more messages |
| ✅ Creates 1:1 clone of your mailbox | ⚠️ Requires more storage space |
| ✅ A message can be found in every folder you expect it to be. | ⚠️ Slower migration |
How to Migrate Duplicates:
Before starting your migration, open the Advanced Settings on the migration preview page. Here, enable the option “Migrate Duplicates”.
To learn more about Gmail label conversion when performing an email migration, have a look at our tutorial:
Option B: Skip Duplicates (Default Behaviour)
When skipping duplicates, a folder will be created for the first label that was assigned to the message. The original email is moved into this folder and all subsequent labels are skipped.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| ✅ Both mailboxes have the same size and message count | ⚠️ Not a 1:1 clone of your Gmail mailbox |
| ✅ Less storage required | ⚠️ Mailbox might “feel incomplete”, since every message is only stored in one folder. |
| ✅ Faster migration |
How to Skip Duplicates:
✅ Skipping duplicates is MailJerry’s default behaviour, so you don’t need to change any settings.
To learn more about Gmail label conversion when performing an email migration, have a look at our tutorial:
IMAP to Gmail Migration:Frequent Questions
Is it really risk-free to migrate from Gmail to IMAP using MailJerry?
Yes! MailJerry is technically unable to modify any data in your source Gmail account. This means your existing Gmail emails and labels remain completely intact – no messages are moved, altered, or deleted from Google. Our software simply creates a copy of your Gmail data in your new IMAP mailbox, leaving the original data unchanged.
Can I use my mailboxes while the migration is running?
Yes. You can continue using both your Gmail and your new IMAP mailboxes to receive, read, and send emails while the migration is in progress. However, we recommend avoiding major structural changes (such as large clean-ups or reorganisations) in either mailbox. Also, please disable any third-party tools that may interfere with the migration, such as backup tools or active sync applications.
My Gmail mailbox is very large and progress is slow. What can I do?
Google applies bandwidth limits on how much data can be downloaded from your Gmail account per day. These limits are usually reset within 24 hours, so if you’re not in a hurry, the best approach is to simply wait for the migration to complete.
If you need to speed things up, you can stop the migration and restart it with the “Ignore Google Bandwidth Limits” option enabled. MailJerry will then attempt to bypass Gmail’s limits to migrate your data as quickly as possible.
After enabling “Ignore Google Bandwidth Limits”, my migration failed. What now?
When the “ignore bandwidth limits” option is enabled, Google may disconnect your account, which can cause the migration to encounter errors. If this happens, simply restart the migration without enabling the bandwidth bypass option.
When restarting your migration, the mailbox check may take a bit longer, as the email migration tool needs to identify which messages have already been migrated. Simply wait until the check has finished and proceed as usual.
What is the safest way to get a 1:1 clone of my Gmail inbox?
Enable “Migrate Duplicates” in the advanced settings of your migration. This copies every message for every label, replicating Gmail’s multi-label structure exactly, though it will result in a larger IMAP mailbox due to the duplicated messages.
Can I exclude certain Gmail labels from migration?
Yes. To exclude labels, open Gmail and select “Manage Labels” in the sidebar. Disable “Show in IMAP” for any label you don’t want migrated. These labels won’t be included in the migration.
