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In 2026, moving an IMAP mailbox to Microsoft 365 has become much easier, but the overall experience depends on the method you choose. If you're migrating a single mailbox, the manual method may be enough. For multiple mailboxes or business accounts, an automated approach usually saves time and requires less effort.

Method 1: Manual IMAP Migration
If you want to use Microsoft's built-in migration process, follow these steps:

Sign in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Create the destination mailboxes if they don't already exist. Enable IMAP access on the source email account. Open the Exchange Admin Center and create a new IMAP migration batch. Enter the IMAP server details and mailbox credentials. Start the migration. After it finishes, verify the emails, folders, and attachments.

Limitations of the Manual IMAP to Microsoft 365 Migration Method:

It takes a lot of time when you have multiple mailboxes to migrate. A small configuration mistake can force you to restart the migration from the beginning. Finding and fixing migration errors can be difficult for non-technical users. After the migration, you still need to check that all emails, folders, and attachments have been transferred correctly.

Method 2: Automated IMAP to Microsoft 365 Migration
When I had to move multiple IMAP mailboxes to Microsoft 365, I chose WholeClear IMAP to Office 365 Converter because I wanted a simpler way to migrate several accounts without spending time configuring migration batches.

The process was straightforward:

Launch the application. Enter the IMAP account credentials. Sign in with the Microsoft 365 account. Select the mailbox you want to migrate. Start the migration process. Once it finishes, verify the mailbox folders, email count, and attachments.

What I liked was that I didn't have to export mailbox files or migrate every account separately. The emails, attachments, folder hierarchy, and other mailbox details remained intact after the migration, which made the move to Microsoft 365 much easier to manage.

If your goal is to migrate Google Workspace to an IMAP server in bulk, use a migration method that supports multiple mailboxes instead of moving one account at a time. It saves time and makes the migration much easier to manage, especially for business or organizational accounts.

I recently migrated several Google Workspace mailboxes to a new IMAP email server using a trusted utility instead of doing it manually because the manual method was not practical for the large G Suite to IMAP conversion, plus it is also time consuming to handle bulk data.

For the bulk migration, I used Softaken IMAP to IMAP Migration Tool because it directly transfers mailboxes without downloading or exporting each account separately. I selected the required user accounts, connected both the Google Workspace and destination IMAP servers and migrated them in batches.

A few things I'd recommend before starting:

Enable IMAP in every Google Workspace account. Verify the login credentials for both servers. Test the migration with a small batch first. Compare the mailbox folders, email count, and attachments after each batch. Keep the Google Workspace accounts active until the migration is fully verified.

The above approach made my task simple, allowing me to perform bulk Google Workspace to IMAP migrations effectively.