If you’re a Rackspace Email customer, you’ve likely received the news: mailbox pricing has jumped from $3 to $10 per month. For a small business with 20 mailboxes, that’s an increase from $60/month to $200/month—an extra $1,680 per year.
The natural instinct is to start searching for a new IMAP email provider. But before you start researching alternatives and bracing for a painful migration, there’s an option most customers don’t know about: transferring your domain to a Rackspace reseller partner.
Why We Understand Your Options
At Greatmail, email hosting is our entire business. We operate our own in-house IMAP email servers and have been providing hosted email solutions for years. We’re also an authorized Rackspace reseller, which gives us—and our customers—access to volume pricing on Rackspace Email.
Why does this matter for you? Because we can honestly evaluate the best path forward. For customers already on Rackspace Email who are happy with the service, a full migration to a different platform (even ours) often doesn’t make sense. The switching costs—time, risk, and hassle—outweigh the benefits when there’s a simpler solution available.
That simpler solution: transfer your domain to our Rackspace reseller account, keep everything exactly as it is, and pay a fraction of the new direct pricing.
What Is a Rackspace Reseller?
Rackspace works with authorized reseller partners who purchase mailboxes in volume at discounted rates. These partners can offer the exact same Rackspace Email service—same servers, same webmail, same everything—at significantly lower prices.
Because Greatmail is an authorized Rackspace reseller, we can offer Rackspace Email at $2.95 per mailbox per month—same 25 GB mailboxes you get directly from Rackspace. That’s less than what Rackspace charged before the price increase.
What Changes (And What Doesn’t)
This is the part that surprises most people. Transferring your domain to a Rackspace reseller is an administrative change, not a technical migration.
What Changes
- Your billing relationship (invoices come from the reseller)
- Your price per mailbox
What Stays Exactly the Same
- Email platform: Still Rackspace Email—the same reliable IMAP email hosting infrastructure
- Webmail: Same login URL, same interface
- DNS records: No MX record changes, no TXT/SPF updates, no DKIM modifications
- Email clients: Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail—no reconfiguration needed, same IMAP/POP settings
- Mobile devices: iPhone, Android, tablets all continue working without any settings changes
- Your data: All emails, folders, contacts, and calendars remain intact
- Email addresses: Nothing changes, obviously
In other words, your end users won’t notice anything different. There’s no “migration day” to schedule, no DNS propagation to wait for, and no risk of missed emails during a transition window.
The Cost Comparison
Let’s look at real numbers:
| Mailboxes | Rackspace Direct ($10/mo) | Via Greatmail ($2.95/mo) | Monthly Savings | Annual Savings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | $100 | $29.50 | $70.50 | $846 |
| 25 | $250 | $73.75 | $176.25 | $2,115 |
| 50 | $500 | $147.50 | $352.50 | $4,230 |
| 100 | $1,000 | $295.00 | $705.00 | $8,460 |
How the Domain Transfer Process Works
Rackspace has a built-in domain transfer feature that makes moving to a reseller account straightforward. Here’s what to expect:
Step 1: Request a Transfer from Your Current Account
Log into your Rackspace control panel and navigate to the domain you want to transfer. Look for the option to initiate a domain transfer (this is an administrative transfer within Rackspace, not a domain registrar transfer).
Step 2: Generate the Transfer URL
Rackspace will generate a unique transfer URL for your domain. This URL contains the authorization needed to complete the transfer.
Step 3: Send the Transfer URL to Your New Reseller
Provide the transfer URL to your reseller partner. At Greatmail, you can email this directly to our support team or submit it through your account dashboard.
Step 4: Reseller Accepts and Finalizes the Transfer
The reseller uses the transfer URL to move your domain into a child account under their reseller umbrella. This process typically completes within a few hours.
Step 5: Confirm Everything Is Working
Once complete, verify you can access the control panel through your reseller, confirm webmail access, and do a quick test send/receive. Since no technical settings change, everything should work exactly as before.
What About Support?
When you move to a reseller, your first point of contact for support becomes the reseller rather than Rackspace directly. At Greatmail, we handle the vast majority of support requests in-house. For complex infrastructure issues, we work directly with Rackspace on your behalf.
For most customers, this is actually an improvement—you get more personalized support from a smaller team rather than navigating a large corporate support system.
Is This Right for You?
Transferring to a reseller makes sense if:
- You’re happy with Rackspace Email as a platform
- You want to avoid the hassle of migrating to a completely new provider
- You’re looking to reduce costs without disrupting your team
- You have multiple mailboxes (the savings add up quickly)
If you’ve been considering switching to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or another provider anyway, this might be a good time to evaluate those options—our ultimate email hosting guide can help you compare. But if Rackspace Email has been working well for you, there’s no reason to go through a full migration just because of a price increase.
Ready to Make the Switch?
Moving your Rackspace Email to Greatmail takes less than a day and requires zero technical changes on your end. Your team keeps using email exactly as they do today—the only difference is a smaller line item on your monthly expenses.
Contact us to get started → or request a quote based on your current mailbox count.
Have questions about the transfer process? Our team has helped dozens of businesses move their Rackspace domains to our reseller account. Reach out and we’ll walk you through exactly what to expect.