How a migration works

Five steps, and you decide when each one happens. Nothing is on a clock but you.

1. See what you have, before you connect anything

Tell us roughly what you are moving and we show you what it would cost. No account, no email address, no sales call. If the number is wrong for you, that is the end of it and you have lost nothing.

2. Connect the account you are leaving — Ownpace only reads

You give Ownpace access to the account you want to move. Ownpace only reads from it: the software has no code that changes, moves or deletes anything at a source, and a test in the public code checks that for every source. The permission you give can allow more than Ownpace uses. For Google Drive, Google Tasks and Connect with Microsoft, the permission itself is read-only as well. For Gmail, the calendars and contacts of a Google account, Microsoft 365 over IMAP, and any account you connect with a password, the permission also allows changes; there the guarantee is the software's. For Google, the app says so beside the button, before you connect.

You can withdraw that access at your provider at any time, without asking us, and the migration stops.

3. We copy, and then we keep copying

The first pass moves everything. After that, every change on the old account — new mail, a moved file, an edited contact — arrives on the new one, until you switch over. Keep copying after that, and only new items keep arriving.

This is the part most tools do not do. A one-shot copy means the copy starts going stale the moment it finishes, which is why one-shot migrations happen over a weekend and feel like a deadline. Ownpace has no deadline, because the copy never goes stale.

Run it again and nothing duplicates. Every item is recorded by an identifier its own provider gave it, so a second pass recognises what it already moved. Interrupt it, restart it, leave it for a month — it picks up where it left off.

4. Check it, at whatever pace suits you

Both accounts work. Use the new one for real mail while the old one keeps receiving. Look in the folders you care about. Find the one message you were worried about.

Anything that could not be moved is listed for you, item by item, with the reason. Formats differ between providers and some things genuinely do not survive the crossing — the difference is whether you are told.

5. Switch when you are ready

You say when. At that point the migration finishes, and your old account is still sitting there, untouched, for as long as you keep it.

Switching means pointing your apps at the new provider instead of the old one: your mail app, the calendars and contacts on your phone, and the app that syncs your files. If your address is on a domain of your own, you also change where that domain's mail is delivered, in its DNS settings, so new mail goes straight to your new home.

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What we would tell a friend

Keep the old account for a while after you switch. It costs you little, it is the best possible safety net, and the whole product is built so you can. That is what "at your own pace" actually means.

Move one thing first if you are nervous. Contacts are small and quick and prove the whole chain works. Then do the rest.

Start everything at once if you are not. The bill falls by itself as each thing finishes. Going one at a time is free instead, on Free, and slower; which is better is yours to say.