Leaving Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for your own email
When your business email runs on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, your mailboxes are held by a US-headquartered group, on its terms, in data centres it chooses within the limits it has committed to. Moving your mail to Noiz, either on a hosting plan or on a Private Email server of your own, keeps it on servers Noiz runs, with a South African company you contract with directly, on open standards you can take anywhere. The move itself is routine: mail is copied across over IMAP, the domain's mail records are switched, and senders' servers keep retrying during the short changeover so nothing is lost.
Where your mail is kept today
Microsoft 365. Microsoft commits that, for a tenant provisioned in South Africa, Exchange Online mailbox content (message bodies, calendar entries and attachments) is stored at rest in South Africa, in its Cape Town and Johannesburg data centres. That commitment covers the listed mailbox content at rest. Microsoft lists other Microsoft 365 services separately that carry no such data-location commitment.
Google Workspace. Google lets administrators on some editions choose a data region for their data, and the choices are the United States, Europe or no preference. South Africa is not an option. Google's data processing terms say customer data may be processed in any country where Google or its subprocessors have facilities, subject to those commitments.
In both cases, where your mail sits is decided by the provider's commitments and terms, which the provider can change, not by you.
Who can be asked for it
Both companies are part of groups headquartered in the United States. A United States law, the CLOUD Act of 2018, says a provider of electronic communication services must comply with its legal obligations to preserve or disclose the contents of communications and customer records "within such provider's possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether such communication, record, or other information is located within or outside of the United States".
How that law applies to a particular company, subsidiary or mailbox is a question for lawyers. The practical point is simpler: data sovereignty depends on who holds the data and under which law, as well as on where the servers are.
What changes when your mail is with Noiz
- Servers Noiz runs. Noiz shared hosting, mail included, runs on servers we operate. Private Email runs on a server we run for your organisation alone.
- You contract with a South African company. Noiz Cybersecurity (Pty) Ltd is the company that holds your mail, runs the servers and answers your tickets.
- Open standards, not a platform. Your mailbox is ordinary IMAP and SMTP. Any standard mail app works with it, including Thunderbird, and you can move it again whenever you choose.
- One less copy. Some newer mail apps sync a mailbox through their maker's cloud. Our article on how the new Outlook hands your mailbox to Microsoft explains why we recommend Thunderbird, which connects your computer straight to your mail server.
Two ways to host your mail with Noiz
Email on a hosting plan. Every Noiz shared hosting plan includes email for your own domains, with webmail, IMAP access and spam filtering, managed in the same control panel as your website. It suits a business with everyday mail.
Private Email. For an organisation whose mail has outgrown shared hosting, Noiz runs a mail server for that organisation alone and looks after the server, updates, monitoring, DNS and authentication records, and daily backups kept off the server. It includes webmail, IMAP and SMTP, a learning spam filter and virus scanning, quarantine, two-factor sign-in for users, DKIM with SPF and DMARC set up, and sync jobs that copy mail across from your old provider. It is quoted for each deployment.
Security you control
Moving your mail is a chance to raise its security, not only to change its address.
- Two-factor sign-in for users on Private Email.
- OpenPGP encryption for messages that matter, built into Thunderbird, so the message is readable only by the person it is for, wherever it is stored. Our help centre explains why and how to encrypt your email with OpenPGP.
- Domain protection with SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, so others cannot easily send mail in your name. The Email Security add-on keeps them configured for a domain hosted with Noiz, and Private Email sets them up for your domains.
How the move works
A move away from Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace has four parts.
- Set up the new mailboxes at Noiz with the same addresses.
- Copy the mail across over IMAP. Tools such as imapsync copy every folder and can be run again without making duplicates, so the copy can be refreshed just before and just after the switch.
- Switch the mail records. Sending servers find your mail server by looking up your domain's MX records. Once you point them at Noiz, new mail starts arriving there.
- Sync once more, then close the old service. Some senders keep the old answer until it expires from their DNS cache, and mail servers retry deliveries for days, so a final copy from the old mailboxes catches anything that arrived late.
Calendars and contacts move separately from mail, so ask us how yours will be carried across.
Check your record-keeping duties first
Leaving is also a good moment to check what your business must keep. SARS requires its authorisation for electronic records kept outside South Africa, and the Protection of Personal Information Act limits sending personal information to another country without one of its conditions being met. Whether your mail counts is a question for your tax or legal adviser, but knowing exactly which company holds your mail, and on what terms, makes the answer easier to give.
Ask us about moving your mail
Tell us how many mailboxes you have, how much mail you hold and where it is today. We will say whether a hosting plan carries it or quote Private Email, and explain what the move involves. See the email hosting page or open a ticket.
Sources
Checked 19 October 2026.
Microsoft
- Data residency for Exchange Online
- Microsoft 365 data centre locations
- Where your Microsoft 365 data is stored
Law and standards
- 18 U.S.C. 2713 (CLOUD Act)
- SARS: record keeping
- Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (section 72)
- RFC 5321: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (sections 4.5.4.1 and 5.1)
Tools
Noiz
Note: while some of this content was produced with the help of AI, the final editing has been done by a real human being.
