Switching to EmailFig from another provider

Getting startedUpdated

How to move your lists, keep your unsubscribes, and protect the sending reputation you already built.

Moving to EmailFig is four steps: verify your sending domain, export your contacts from your old provider, import them with their statuses intact, and ease back into your normal sending. The part that matters most is bringing your unsubscribes across, so you never email someone who has already opted out.

Start with the domain. It’s the only step with any waiting, and it happens in the background while you get on with the rest.

1. Verify your sending domain

Do this while you’re still sending from your old provider; adding a domain here doesn’t affect mail leaving anywhere else. EmailFig shows you a short list of DNS records to add at your domain provider (a DKIM record, an MX and SPF record on a dedicated MAIL FROM subdomain, and a DMARC record at your registrable domain), laid out to copy in.

If you already publish a DMARC policy, EmailFig verifies it as-is and never asks you to weaken it.

See Add and verify a sending domain and Publish DNS records at your registrar.

2. Export everything from your old provider

Export three things, not one:

  • your subscribed contacts, with names and any custom data you personalise with;
  • your unsubscribes;
  • your bounced / cleaned / suppressed addresses.

Most providers export these as separate files. Keep them separate: that’s what makes the next step work.

3. Create your lists, then import

Create a list per audience you actually send to (Lists → New list). Lists are your send targets; use tags for labels and segments for dynamic filters. See Contacts, lists and tags: how they fit together.

Then import each file at Contacts → Import CSV. On the Map columns screen, point each column at a contact field (exactly one has to be the email address) and click Start import.

Bringing your opt-outs across

In your unsubscribe and bounce exports, add a column like status, fill it with unsubscribed for the opt-outs and cleaned for the bounced addresses, and map that column to status on the Map columns screen. It’s never mapped for you automatically. When you do:

  • unsubscribed records a suppression, so that address is skipped by every campaign on your account from then on, however many times it’s re-imported;
  • cleaned lands the contact as unmailable and off the list, the same state a bounce would produce here;
  • anything unrecognised falls back to subscribed.

Import those files before your subscriber file, or at least before your first send. A suppression always wins even if a later import calls the address subscribed, so the order is good practice rather than strictly necessary.

If you only have a handful of addresses to block, add them one at a time at Contacts → Suppressions instead.

More: Import contacts from a CSV, Contact statuses explained, Suppressions: why an address can’t be re-added.

Don’t import a list you can’t account for. We check list quality at import, before a single email is sent, and a file that looks bought, scraped or harvested stops the import and holds the account. See Why you shouldn’t send to purchased lists and This list doesn’t meet our import quality bar.

4. Set up the rest of your account

  • Mailing address: Settings → Unsubscribes. Required before you can send.
  • Unsubscribe experience: simple one-click, or a preference centre where recipients pick topics. Same page. See Customise the unsubscribe experience.
  • Sending defaults: a default from name and from email, prefilled into every new campaign. Settings → Sending domains.
  • Custom fields: create these before importing if your CSV carries data you personalise with, so you can map straight to them. See Create and use custom fields.
  • Signup forms: rebuild them here and swap the embed on your site. See Create an embedded signup form.

5. Ease into your first sends

After a migration, your domain’s reputation carries over but your sending path is new, so ease in rather than mailing your whole list on day one:

What doesn’t come with you

  • Engagement history. Opens and clicks from your old provider can’t be imported, so engagement-based segments only start filling once you’ve sent from here. Those rules look back at most 90 days.
  • Automation state. Rebuild automations here; contacts don’t arrive mid-flow. Imports never trigger automations: importing 50,000 people into a list with a welcome series will not mail them. See Why imports don’t trigger automations.
  • Anything the CSV didn’t carry.

Where to go next

Moving something unusual, like a domain another account already claimed, or a list you’re unsure about? Email support@emailfig.com before you import.