Switching from Mailchimp, SendGrid, Klaviyo, or any ESP without a deliverability audit is one of the most common causes of a permanent reputation collapse. Migomail audits your authentication setup, list quality, sender reputation, and content before migration — giving you a prioritised action plan to migrate clean.
Most ESP migrations fail for one of five reasons: authentication gaps that break on the new platform, list quality problems that trigger blacklisting, reputation gaps between old and new sending IPs, content problems that surface under stricter filters, and technical mismatches between ESP capabilities. The Migration Audit finds all five before you move.
Check whether your current DKIM, SPF, and DMARC configuration will translate cleanly to Migomail — or whether there are gaps that will cause authentication failures after the move. DKIM keys are specific to your sending platform; SPF records reference specific infrastructure; DMARC policy may need updating for the new sending domain. Every gap is documented with the exact DNS change required.
Audit your subscriber list for indicators that predict deliverability problems after migration: bounce history, engagement patterns, consent quality, spam trap indicators, and list age. A list that performed acceptably on your current platform may trigger blacklisting on a new IP with no established reputation — if it carries invalid addresses, disengaged segments, or consent issues that your current ESP suppressed silently.
Evaluate the reputation of your current sending IPs and domains using Gmail Postmaster Tools, Outlook SNDS, Yahoo CFL, and third-party reputation databases. Understand what reputation baseline you are leaving behind and what warmup investment is required to establish equivalent reputation on new Migomail infrastructure.
Review your top-performing email templates against Migomail spam filter rules, HTML rendering standards, and authentication alignment requirements. Identify any templates that use tracking domains or link structures that will fail on the new platform, and any content patterns that score above safe thresholds.
Map all integrations, automations, and API dependencies that need to be rebuilt or reconfigured on Migomail — CRM connections, transactional email API calls, webhook endpoints, automation triggers, and any custom suppression list syncs. Identify which can be migrated directly and which need redevelopment.
All findings are delivered as a structured written report with: an executive summary, a prioritised action list, a migration readiness score, a risk register for each identified issue, and a phased migration roadmap with week-by-week milestones. The report includes the exact DNS record values, configuration steps, and list hygiene actions needed before migration day.
The audit concludes with a phased roadmap covering three stages: pre-migration (authentication setup, list hygiene, DNS preparation), migration (IP warmup schedule, traffic cutover plan, monitoring protocol), and post-migration (reputation verification, performance benchmarking, issue response playbook).
Migomail assigns a deliverability expert to your migration for the duration of the active cutover period. They monitor sending metrics, blacklist status, and inbox placement in real time during the migration — and are available to escalate any issues that arise during the warmup and cutover.
This is a sample audit scorecard from a Mailchimp-to-Migomail migration. The overall score of 58/100 indicates significant remediation needed before safe migration — particularly in list quality and authentication.
The audit identifies what you are leaving behind. This comparison shows what you gain. Where your current platform has gaps or limitations, Migomail fills them.
| Feature / Capability | Mailchimp / SendGrid / Klaviyo | Migomail |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing & Sending | ||
| Pricing model | Per-email + subscriber charges | Subscriber-based · unlimited sends |
| Send volume overages | Charged per email above plan limit | No overage — fair use policy |
| Transactional email | Separate product or add-on cost | Included in all plans |
| Dedicated IP included | Paid add-on (varies) | Included from Pro plan upward |
| Authentication & Deliverability | ||
| Hosted DMARC with report processing | Not included | Included — full RUA processing |
| MTA-STS & TLS-RPT | Not included | Included as service |
| Blacklist monitoring (50+ RBLs) | Not included | Included — 15-min intervals |
| DMARC forensic reports (RUF) | Not included | Included — full RUF processing |
| Spam testing (SpamAssassin + placement) | Limited / add-on | Unlimited in paid plans |
| IP warmup managed service | Manual guidance only | Managed warmup + daily monitoring |
| Email Security Services | ||
| Email threat intelligence | Not offered | Lookalike domain + BEC monitoring |
| Phishing/spoofing detection | Not offered | Real-time alert + takedown support |
| Migration audit service | Not offered | Full pre-migration audit + report |
| Automation & Features | ||
| Automation workflows | Visual builder — limited branching | Unlimited workflows + complex branching |
| Inbox preview (clients) | Add-on or limited plan | 90+ clients included |
| A/B + multivariate testing | Limited plans only | All paid plans |
| AI-powered segmentation | Basic segmentation | AI segmentation from Growth plan |
| Support | ||
| Customer support response | 24–48hr standard | 4hr SLA on Business plan |
| Dedicated account manager | Enterprise only | From Pro plan |
| Deliverability expert access | Paid add-on or not available | Included — migration + ongoing |
| Migration support | Self-serve documentation | Hands-on expert support |
Every Migration Audit produces a risk register. These are the six most common high-impact migration risks — each with a probability score, impact score, combined P×I rating, and the mitigation steps that eliminate or reduce the risk before migration day.
A typical ESP migration with a complete pre-migration audit takes 6–8 weeks from kickoff to full traffic running on Migomail. This is the milestone plan that comes with every Migration Audit report.
The migration audit found that our list had a 6.2% hard bounce rate — something we had been ignoring because Mailchimp was suppressing bounces silently without telling us how many we had accumulated. The audit flagged that if we migrated this list directly to new infrastructure, we would be blacklisted within 48 hours. We spent three weeks cleaning the list before moving — removed 18,000 addresses, suppressed all 12-month inactives, and ran a re-permission campaign on the oldest segment. After migration, our hard bounce rate was 0.4% and our open rate improved by 11 percentage points on the first post-migration campaign. We would have destroyed our reputation if we had moved without the audit.
We had tried to migrate from SendGrid to another platform 18 months before we came to Migomail — without any pre-migration work. Within a week of the move, our Gmail inbox placement dropped from 91% to 23% and we got a Spamhaus listing. We spent the next three months in a reputation hole that cost us an estimated six figures in email channel revenue. When we decided to switch again — this time to Migomail — we did not repeat that mistake. We commissioned the Migration Audit. The auditor found the same problems that caused the first migration to fail: poor list hygiene and a complaint rate already at the edge of acceptable. But this time we fixed everything first. The Migration Audit took 5 days. The pre-migration remediation took 4 weeks. The actual migration took 6 weeks of careful warmup. Eight weeks after completing the audit, we were fully on Migomail with 94% Gmail inbox placement — better than we had ever achieved on either previous platform. The audit cost was a rounding error compared to what not doing it cost us the first time.
As an agency, we migrate clients between ESPs regularly. The Migomail Migration Audit has become our standard first step before any migration, regardless of which platform the client is moving to. The authentication gap analysis and integration mapping sections save us days of work that we used to do manually — and the audit finds things we would have missed. Last quarter we ran the audit for a client moving from Klaviyo and discovered they had three active automation workflows that were sending emails to unsubscribed addresses — a Klaviyo bug they had not noticed. We caught and fixed it before migration. Without the audit, that suppression gap would have been invisible until complaints started arriving on the new platform.
“Rackwave Technologies has significantly improved our marketing performance while providing reliable cloud services. We’ve been using their solutions for a while now, and the experience has been seamless, scalable, and results-driven.”
David Larry
Founder & CEO
Common questions about the Migration Audit and ESP switching.
Yes — in most cases. Your current deliverability metrics reflect your reputation on your current sending infrastructure. When you move to a new ESP, you start on new IPs (or shared infrastructure) with no established reputation. The warmup period on the new infrastructure is when migration problems surface. An audit identifies list quality issues, authentication gaps, and complaint rate risks that will manifest during warmup — not necessarily while you are on your established current platform where your reputation buffers those issues.
Five business days from receipt of all required inputs — access to your current ESP analytics (opens, clicks, bounce rates, complaint rates), DNS configuration details, list age and acquisition method information, and integration dependencies. Some audits take longer if data is incomplete or additional investigation is required for specific risk areas.
The audit is platform-agnostic — we have audited migrations from Mailchimp, SendGrid, Klaviyo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, Brevo, ActiveCampaign, Marketo, Iterable, and custom SMTP setups. The audit methodology focuses on deliverability fundamentals (authentication, list quality, reputation) that apply regardless of which platform you are moving from.
When you start sending on new IP addresses, mailbox providers like Gmail and Outlook have no sending history for those IPs — they do not know whether they are legitimate or spam sources. Warmup is the process of gradually increasing sending volume over several weeks while maintaining excellent engagement metrics, so providers build a positive reputation record for your IPs before you trust them with high-volume sending. Starting at full volume on unwarm IPs triggers spam filters regardless of content quality — the IP simply has no reputation to indicate it is safe. 6 weeks is the typical timeline for warming IPs to handle a list of 100,000+ subscribers safely.
Yes. All subscriber data, custom fields, tags, and segments can be exported from any major ESP in CSV format and imported to Migomail. The global suppression list (unsubscribes, bounces, complaints) should be exported separately and imported to Migomail before the first send. The Migration Audit documents exactly what to export, in what format, and in what order — ensuring the suppression list is in place before any email sends on Migomail infrastructure.
A Migration Audit dramatically reduces the risk of migration failure by identifying and addressing the most common causes before the move. However, if an unexpected issue arises during the migration period, your assigned deliverability expert responds within the SLA timeframe with a diagnosis and action plan. Common post-migration issues (complaint rate spike, unexpected bounce category, automation failure) are typically resolvable within 24–48 hours if caught early through monitoring — which is why the Migration Audit includes active monitoring support during the cutover period.