Migration from Hosted Exchange to Microsoft 365

Problem context: A multinational tea industry company with 200+ users had been using GoDaddy email hosting for years. The service had become slow, unstable and expensive, and the support provided no longer met the expectations of an organisation of their size. The decision to migrate to Microsoft 365 was clear, but there was an additional complication: the migration had to be done on a new domain, not just on the existing one.

In addition, the organisation could not afford any period of unavailability. Email was the backbone of their operations — international orders, supplier communications, contracts and deadlines with partners across multiple countries. One day without email meant real operational and financial chaos.

How we approached the situation: We started with a complete audit of the existing environment — mailbox sizes, folder structures, shared calendars, distribution lists, mail flow rules, and any special configurations they had in GoDaddy. We documented everything before touching anything.

We created a migration plan with rollback possible at every step. The first phase was setting up Microsoft 365 — new tenant, security policies, mandatory MFA, basic DLP for sensitive data, plus the complete configuration of the new domain (DNS, MX records, SPF, DKIM, DMARC).

The migration itself was carried out in a single phase — a coordinated full migration, with all 200+ mailboxes transferred simultaneously from GoDaddy to Microsoft 365 and onto the new domain. Each user received in advance a clear email explaining what was changing, what their new address would be, and what they needed to do — simple, without technical jargon.

Shared calendars and permissions were recreated manually wherever the automatic migration didn't transfer them correctly. Distribution lists were recreated as Microsoft 365 groups. Email signatures were standardised with the new domain and deployed centrally.

We organised two training sessions for users, structured by company roles, of one hour each. By the end, everyone knew exactly how Outlook worked in the new configuration and how to use the rest of the 365 suite (Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive).

The outcome:

• 200+ mailboxes fully migrated, zero data loss
• 0% emails lost during migration
• Complete transition to the new domain, without confusion for users or external partners
• Zero perceived downtime for users
• Shared calendars and permissions correctly rebuilt
• MFA enabled on all users, significantly improved security
• Reduced monthly costs compared to the previous provider
• Team received training and knows how to use Teams, SharePoint and the rest of the 365 suite