Migrate MX Plan addresses (Zimbra webmail) to Zimbra Pro without breaking existing Exchange

Hello,

I have a domain on which two email services coexist at OVH:

  • A MXPlan service with 12 accounts, recently migrated to the new Zimbra webmail following the OVH migration campaign.
  • A Hosted Exchange service with 1 account.

Both services are configured in Non-authoritative mode on the domain, which allows their coexistence. Exchange is working well at the moment and I definitely do not want to break this configuration.

I would like to move certain addresses from my MXPlan to a Zimbra Pro offering.

My questions:

  1. Should I order a separate Zimbra Pro service and then migrate the relevant accounts from MXPlan to this new service? Or is there a way to upgrade my current MXPlan (already on Zimbra webmail) directly to Zimbra Pro?
  2. Does this operation require reconfiguring the domain’s MX or DNS records?
  3. If so, how can I ensure that my Exchange service, currently functional on the same domain, will not be affected?
  4. Can I migrate only certain addresses (not all 12) to Zimbra Pro, leaving the others on MXPlan?

Thank you in advance for your response,

Following my initial post — here’s what we’ve been able to clarify for those who come across this thread later:

Context: domain with MXPlan (migrated to Zimbra webmail) + Hosted Exchange already coexisting, and desire to add Zimbra Pro for certain addresses.

What we have confirmed:

  1. Coexistence of multiple OVH email services on the same domain is possible, provided each service is set to non‑authoritative mode. The shared MX cluster (mx0-4.mail.ovh.net) then routes each mail to the correct backend based on the recipient address.
  2. The authoritative/non‑authoritative mode is not fixed — confirmed by an OVH advisor in live chat: it can be changed afterwards if needed.
  3. When ordering a new Zimbra service on a domain already in use, the configuration screen offers “Recommended configuration” (which switches the entire MX to this new service — to be avoided in a coexistence scenario) or “Custom configuration” (allows you to uncheck MX/SPF/SRV individually). The message “Your domain will be configured in authoritative mode” that appears on this screen seems generic and does not accurately reflect the actual configuration once MX/SPF are unchecked — also confirmed by support.
  4. Watch out for the SRV record (autodiscover): if you keep Exchange, do not let Zimbra reconfigure the _autodiscover._tcp SRV — it would overwrite the existing Exchange configuration. A “SRV configuration error” diagnostic will appear on Zimbra in that case, but it is normal and harmless: it simply indicates that autodiscover remains dedicated to Exchange.
  5. To migrate existing accounts (MXPlan) to Zimbra Pro, the official tool is OVHcloud Mail Migrator (omm.ovhcloud.com), compatible with Exchange/Zimbra/IMAP/POP. The procedure has two steps: migrate the content to a temporary account, then rename (delete the source account + assign the final address to the new account, with a 5‑minute gap between the two steps).
  6. Technical support: my support tier did not allow opening a “consultation” ticket for this type of question (incidents only). The live chat (often via the AI assistant then escalated to a human) provided a clear answer.

Hello @soiftheonlyone

Here are the answers to your various questions:

To migrate an MXplan address to Zimbra Pro, you just need to add a licence to your existing Zimbra platform.
It is also possible to create a second Zimbra organisation if the address you want to migrate uses a domain name different from the one already in use on the platform, for example.

It is not possible to automatically migrate an MXplan offering to Zimbra (not yet :wink:)

There is no need to modify the DNS configuration in your case.

Yes!

For creating the address on Zimbra:

Once your licence is ready to be used on Zimbra, I invite you to rename your MXplan address – for example, change contact@domaine.fr to contact01@domaine.fr. This will allow you to recreate the address contact@domaine.fr on Zimbra.

To migrate the content of the address contact01@domaine.fr (MXplan) to contact@domaine.fr (Zimbra), you have two options:

1 - Via our OVH Mail Migrator tool: https://docs.ovhcloud.com/fr/guides/web-cloud/email-and-collaborative-solutions/migrating/omm-migrate-email-account-to-ovhcloud

2 - Via an email client (to perform an import/export): https://docs.ovhcloud.com/fr/guides/web-cloud/email-and-collaborative-solutions/migrating/manual-email-migration#outlook

Feel free to ask if you have any further questions.

Astérix