Emails to info@ Going Missing? Fixing Email Aliases After a Migration

You’ve moved your business email to a new provider and your main inbox is working perfectly. Then a customer mentions they emailed info@ last week and never heard back.

Extra addresses like info@, sales@ and accounts@ are where most problems hide after an email migration. They’re usually set up as aliases, groups or forwarders, and unlike your main mailbox they don’t move across on their own. This guide explains how they work, what typically goes wrong, and how to check yours.

Most business email accounts have one or two real mailboxes, plus a handful of extra addresses that feed into them. Those extra addresses are usually set up in one of four ways:

• Alias: a second address for an existing mailbox. Email to info@ simply lands in the owner’s normal inbox.
• Group (or distribution list): one address that delivers to several people, such as sales@ going to two or three staff.
• Forwarder: a rule that passes email on to another address, sometimes outside your business, like a personal Gmail.
• Shared mailbox: a separate inbox that several people can open, often used for accounts@ or support@.

To someone emailing you, they all look the same. Behind the scenes they’re set up differently, and that matters when you move provider.

When you move to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, migration tools copy your mailboxes: the emails, folders and contacts. They usually don’t copy the extra addresses, because those are settings on your old provider rather than mail. The common results are:

• The address was never recreated. Once your domain’s MX records point at the new provider, email to info@ arrives somewhere that has never heard of it, and the sender gets an “address not found” bounce, if they notice it at all.
• It was recreated as the wrong type. An address that used to reach three people now reaches only one, because it was set up as an alias instead of a group.
• The old provider still thinks it handles your email. This is common when email used to come with your web hosting. Messages sent from your own website, such as contact form enquiries, are delivered straight into the old hosting mailbox and never reach the new one. On cPanel hosting, the fix is a setting called Email Routing, which needs changing to Remote Mail Exchanger.
• A forwarder to an outside address stopped working. Microsoft 365 blocks automatic forwarding to external addresses by default, so a rule that sent info@ to a personal Gmail quietly fails, or bounces with an error like 550 5.7.520.

A subtler problem: emails to sales@ arrive fine, but when you reply, the customer sees your personal address instead. That’s confusing for customers, and their next email skips the shared address you wanted them to use.

In Google Workspace, each alias has to be added in Gmail under Settings → Accounts → Send mail as before you can choose it as the From address. Selecting Reply from the same address the message was sent to makes Gmail do this automatically.

In Microsoft 365, sending from an alias has to be switched on for the whole organisation by an administrator before Outlook lets you pick it. Until then, replies always go out from the main address.

Forwarding info@ to a personal Gmail or Hotmail address is tempting, but it’s one of the most fragile setups there is. A forwarded email arrives at Gmail from your provider’s servers while still claiming to be from the original sender. That often fails the sender’s SPF check and can fail DMARC, so forwarded messages are more likely to land in spam or be rejected, particularly from senders with strict settings such as banks and large companies.

Where you can, make the address an alias or group inside your business email instead, and add the right people to it. If someone needs to see the emails on the go, they can add the business account to their phone rather than forwarding everything.

This takes about ten minutes. You’ll need a personal email account, such as a Gmail or Hotmail address:

• List every address your business uses: on your website, invoices, business cards, email signatures and directory listings, plus anything still set up in your old provider’s control panel.
• Send a test email to each one from your personal account, with the address in the subject line so you can tell them apart.
• Check where each one lands: the right inbox, the right people, and not in spam. Watch for bounce messages coming back to your personal account.
• Reply to each test and check which address the reply comes from.
• Fill in your website’s contact form and check the enquiry arrives in your new mailbox.

Anything that bounces, goes to the wrong person or replies from the wrong address needs setting up again on your new provider.

If you haven’t moved yet, a little preparation avoids all of the above:

• Note down every alias, group, forwarder and auto-reply on your old provider.
• Recreate them on the new provider before you change your MX records. In Google Workspace, an administrator can give each user up to 30 aliases. In Microsoft 365, they’re added to each user’s email addresses in the admin centre.
• Use groups or shared mailboxes for addresses that more than one person needs.
• Set up “send as” for each alias so replies come from the right address.
• If your website is hosted somewhere else, make sure your web host knows your email is now handled elsewhere.
• Run the tests above as soon as the switch is complete, and keep your old account for a few weeks in case anything was missed.

My guide to switching email provider without losing emails covers the rest of the move.

If all your tests pass, you’re done. If an address bounces or goes quiet, work through the list above: most alias problems after a migration come down to an address that was never recreated, or a website that’s still delivering email to the old server. If it’s your website’s form that has stopped working, my guide to contact forms that stop sending emails explains the fixes.

On a Plusnet address that stopped sending when your email moved to Greenby? That has its own fix: see my guide to Plusnet email not sending after the move to Greenby.

Need help fixing this?

I provide:

• Free initial assessment
• Clear explanation of the issue
• Fixed-price solutions
• UK-based support

If addresses like info@ or sales@ have stopped working since you changed provider, I can find out where the emails are going and set everything up properly.