Why leaving GoDaddy needs care
When you buy Microsoft 365 through GoDaddy, your users live in a genuine Microsoft tenant, but you sign in through GoDaddy’s pages and GoDaddy is the reseller. To move to Microsoft directly or to another Microsoft partner, GoDaddy has to release that tenant. Microsoft’s own documentation sends admins to GoDaddy’s process and warns that unofficial methods can stop people signing in to their mailboxes.
The route depends on where you are going: staying on Microsoft 365 with someone else, or moving to a different platform altogether.
Route 1: staying on Microsoft 365, leaving GoDaddy
GoDaddy’s published process, in order:
- Check the basics. Your GoDaddy plans must be active, not in a failed billing state, and not due to expire within the next five business days. Make sure your admin can sign in and has access to their MFA method.
- Change your GoDaddy account’s contact email if it is on the domain that is moving. GoDaddy sends the temporary admin password there, so it must be an address outside the organisation.
- Deal with add-ons first. GoDaddy deletes email add-ons during the move. Its email backup is removed and cannot be restored afterwards, archived mail needs moving or exporting, and if you use its Advanced Email Security your MX records must be updated before the move.
- Contact GoDaddy and go through its move questions. It opens a ticket and, on the next business day, sends a temporary password for your admin accounts.
- Sign in at Microsoft directly with that temporary password, then set new passwords for every user. The GoDaddy sign-in page stops working for Microsoft 365.
- Now buy licences from Microsoft or your new partner and assign them. If the plan differs from your GoDaddy plan, remove the GoDaddy licence from each user before assigning the new one. Do this promptly: GoDaddy suspends its plans in your organisation shortly after the move completes.
- Remove the old GoDaddy plans from your GoDaddy account. GoDaddy stays listed as a reseller on the tenant until its subscriptions expire.
Your mailboxes, files and users stay where they are — it is the same tenant — so there is no mail to migrate. Every domain in the organisation moves together, and GoDaddy says a tenant cannot move back once it has left.
The mistakes to avoid
- Buying licences from Microsoft or another reseller before the move. It creates a new, separate tenant, and GoDaddy says the two cannot be merged.
- Deleting mailboxes or users at GoDaddy first. Leave everything in place until the tenant has moved.
- Forgetting the backup add-on. If GoDaddy’s email backup is your only backup, export what you need before the move — it is deleted with the add-on.
- Leaving licences until later. Once GoDaddy suspends its plans, unlicensed users stop working. Have the new licences bought and assigned the same day.
- Using a contact email on the moving domain. You would lose access to the message carrying the temporary password just when you need it.
Route 2: moving to a different platform
If you are leaving Microsoft 365 altogether — for hosted Exchange, for example — you do not need the tenant release at all. It is an ordinary mailbox migration: the new provider copies your mail, calendars and contacts across while GoDaddy’s service keeps running, then your domain’s MX and Autodiscover records are switched over.
- Keep the GoDaddy plans active until the migration is complete and checked. When they end, the mail goes with them.
- The migration needs admin access to the mailboxes, so make sure you can sign in as an administrator.
- Make sure you control your domain’s DNS. If the domain is registered with GoDaddy, you can keep it there and just change the records, or transfer it.
Our free migration service covers this, and our answer on keeping your email address when you change provider explains the DNS side.
Which route should you take?
If your team uses Teams, SharePoint and the Office apps, stay on Microsoft 365 and take route 1. If email and calendars are what matter, and you would like them hosted in the UK with a named engineer, route 2 to hosted Exchange avoids the tenant release, the password reset for everyone and the licence timing altogether.