# We are changing host. How long will the site be down and what happens to our email? | Illia BizTech > The contract ends on 30 September and the new provider already has the site on their server. Twelve mailboxes are still with the old one and sales is worried about losing orders. Source: https://illia-biztech.de/en/forum/we-are-changing-host-how-long-will-the-site-be-down-and-what-happens-to-our-email 1. [Home](/en) 2. [Forum](/en/forum) 3. We are changing host. How long will the site be down and what happens to our email? # We are changing host. How long will the site be down and what happens to our email? The contract ends on 30 September and the new provider already has the site on their server. Twelve mailboxes are still with the old one and sales is worried about losing orders. * ##### Asked on August 31, 2026 Our current contract runs out on 30 September and the new provider already has the site sitting on their server, so we only have to switch over. Our twelve mailboxes are still with the old provider though, and our colleague in sales is worried that orders will be lost. The new provider says it takes up to 48 hours but does not say what happens during those 48 hours. We would like to switch on a Friday afternoon so that the weekend is quieter. #### Answers ![Portrait of Illia Belichenko, technical specialist at Illia BizTech](/_ipx/f_webp,q_75/https://cms.illia-biztech.de/uploads/small_Illia_Belichenko_author_81f88864f0.png) ##### Illia Belichenko ✓ Accepted answer September 1, 2026 The Friday afternoon is the only part of your plan I would argue against. Everything else can be prepared cleanly. With a clean migration the site does not go down. During those 48 hours different visitors land on different servers depending on which address their provider still has cached. Both servers are serving during that window, so some of your customers see the old site and some the new one, and nobody gets an error. You can shorten that window, but beforehand rather than at the moment of switching. Lower the time to live on the records [24 to 48 hours in advance to five or ten minutes](https://saschafix.de/wissen/blog-articles/dns-propagation-website-umzug/), because the old value has to expire before the new one applies. Anyone doing that on the day of the switch gets no benefit from it at all. The mailboxes are where your colleague is right to be careful. The order matters here: [set the mail route first, then move the website](https://www.serverprofis.de/faq/domains/website-umziehen-mail-bleibt/). If both systems point at different servers at the same time, some of the post goes to the old one and is filed there, in a mailbox nobody looks at any more. The old mail does not travel with you by itself, incidentally. Move the contents of the twelve mailboxes beforehand or back them up locally, and only terminate the old contract once you have watched everything arrive for two weeks. Your contract ends on 30 September, so plan the switch for the middle of the month rather than the 29th. And the reason not to use a Friday: if something jams on Saturday, nobody is reachable at either provider. Take a Tuesday morning. ##### #### [The quote was 6,000 euros and the invoice came to 9,500\. Do we have to pay it?](/en/forum/the-quote-was-6-000-euros-and-the-invoice-came-to-9-500-do-we-have-to-pay-it) September 5, 2026 [](/en/forum/the-quote-was-6-000-euros-and-the-invoice-came-to-9-500-do-we-have-to-pay-it) #### [The confirmation email from our contact form lands in customers' spam. Why?](/en/forum/the-confirmation-email-from-our-contact-form-lands-in-customers-spam-why) September 4, 2026 [](/en/forum/the-confirmation-email-from-our-contact-form-lands-in-customers-spam-why) #### [We received a letter about Google Fonts demanding 170 euros. Do we pay?](/en/forum/we-received-a-letter-about-google-fonts-demanding-170-euros-do-we-pay) September 4, 2026 [](/en/forum/we-received-a-letter-about-google-fonts-demanding-170-euros-do-we-pay) #### [Our shop window carries the company name in German and Upper Sorbian. How do we write it on Google?](/en/forum/our-shop-window-carries-the-company-name-in-german-and-upper-sorbian-how-do-we-write-it-on-google) September 3, 2026 [](/en/forum/our-shop-window-carries-the-company-name-in-german-and-upper-sorbian-how-do-we-write-it-on-google) #### [What counts as a normal cost per enquiry from Google Ads?](/en/forum/what-counts-as-a-normal-cost-per-enquiry-from-google-ads) September 3, 2026 [](/en/forum/what-counts-as-a-normal-cost-per-enquiry-from-google-ads) **Share** **Topics** * hosting * migration * DNS