Leaving HEY: How to Move Off a Closed Email Service

Most "how to switch email clients" guides only cover the client — install a new app, add your Gmail account, every message reappears. Leaving HEY is not that. HEY is both the client and the mailbox host, so moving off it is a genuine migration: address, mail, calendar and workflow habits all have to be planned for. This is the honest version, verified against HEY's own live docs as of August 2026.

The good news first: HEY commits publicly that your mail belongs to you. You can export everything in standard formats at any time, and if you paid for your first year, your @hey.com address stays yours forever — HEY will hold it and forward it without a subscription. That is a real commitment, and it changes the migration in the reader's favour.

What actually moves, and what does not#

HEY does not support IMAP or POP — the FAQ states this plainly. That means every other mail client is blind to your HEY mailbox while it is on HEY. There is no "add HEY as an IMAP account" trick; the migration path is export-then-import, not sync-in-parallel. This one fact reshapes the whole plan compared with leaving Gmail or Outlook.

• Exports cleanly (HEY provides the file): mail as MBOX, calendar as ICS, contacts as vCard. MBOX imports into Apple Mail, Thunderbird and eM Client directly; Gmail and Outlook accept it with a small helper.
• Survives regardless of what you do (HEY-side): your @hey.com address, if you have paid for one full year. HEY preserves it and forwards from it indefinitely, even after you close the account.
• Does not survive the move: Screener approve/reject state, Reply Later and Set Aside stacks, per-thread private notes, and the Feed vs Paper Trail vs Imbox split. These are HEY-specific constructs; another client will have its own or none.

The pre-migration checklist#

Do this list in order, in a quiet hour, before you cancel anything. Every item exists because a real HEY user has lost that specific thing during a rushed exit.

1. 1

   Confirm you have paid for the first year

   Paid year one = your @hey.com address is yours forever under the "Forever yours" policy and you can forward indefinitely. Trial-only or refunded inside year one = the address is recycled after 90 days and someone else may receive mail meant for you.

2. 2

   Run the mail export and download the MBOX

   HEY generates one MBOX per mailbox — a single file containing every message and attachment. Trigger it from account settings, wait for the ready email, and download to a location you actually back up. A 5 GB mailbox produces a several-gigabyte file.

3. 3

   Export calendar (ICS) and contacts (vCard)

   Calendar exports as ICS, importable into Google, Apple, Fastmail and Outlook. Contacts export as one vCard any modern address book reads. Do both even if they feel light — a missed anniversary is not the moment to discover you skipped this step.

4. 4

   Decide what happens to the @hey.com address

   Three honest choices: keep it and forward out to a new inbox as a safety net; keep paying HEY only for the address and treat it as an alias; or notify contacts of a new address and let @hey.com go quiet. Pick before you cancel.

5. 5

   Change your email on every service that emails you

   The boring, revenue-critical step: bank, password manager, GitHub, Stripe, domain registrar, health portal — anywhere a password reset lands — change the email on file. Forwarding is insurance for what you miss, not a substitute for updating account emails.

The migration steps#

Once the exports are in hand, the move is straightforward. Order matters: set up the new mailbox, land the archive, verify, then flip forwarding.

1. 1

   Provision the destination mailbox

   For an address you own for good, use a custom domain on Fastmail, Google Workspace, Proton or Microsoft 365. For a free host, Gmail or Outlook. Avoid another closed silo where host and client are the same company — that reproduces what you are leaving.

2. 2

   Import the MBOX into your new client

   Apple Mail, Thunderbird and eM Client import MBOX directly (File → Import Mailbox). For Gmail, upload via Google Workspace data migration or use ImapSync from a local Thunderbird holding the mbox. For Outlook, convert MBOX to PST first, then import.

3. 3

   Import the ICS calendar and vCard contacts

   Google, Apple and Outlook calendars all accept ICS from Settings → Import. vCard imports the same way into Google, iCloud and Outlook contacts. Spot-check ten events and ten contacts — recurring events and contacts with custom fields translate imperfectly.

4. 4

   Set up forwarding out of HEY (if keeping the address)

   In HEY: account → Forwarding & Sending → Forward email out of HEY → enter new address → confirm. HEY uses ARC to help forwarded mail pass SPF and DKIM, but spam-classified messages will not forward and some receivers may still bounce or spam-flag it.

5. 5

   Update account emails, then close HEY

   Only once forwarding is running and important senders are updated should you close the paid subscription. If you paid for year one, closing does not release the address. If you never paid, cancelling starts a 90-day countdown after which the address is reissued.

What breaks when you leave HEY#

This is the table to read before you commit. Every row is a real HEY construct and what happens to it after you go. If two or three are non-negotiable for your workflow, leaving may be harder than it looks.

Two rows deserve a second read. The Screener is the HEY interaction leavers describe as hardest to give up — the deliberate act of approving a first-time sender is a real behaviour change and no other mainstream client copies it exactly. Leaving means a different pattern (aggressive spam filter, cold-email filter, first-contact quarantine) rather than a like-for-like replacement.

The @hey.com address row is the one that surprises leavers in the good direction. Because HEY commits to holding and forwarding the address after cancellation, you can leave the product without losing your identity — which is why the plan above sets forwarding up before closing the account.

A rollback plan that actually works#

HEY is a closed silo, so "roll back to HEY" is not the same operation as rolling back to Gmail or Outlook. There is no way to sync mail from your new client back into HEY. The rollback you get: reactivate HEY, keep the new destination running in parallel, and route mail whichever way serves you.

1. 1

   Do not cancel HEY until you have run in parallel for two weeks

   Keep paying HEY while you land the archive at the new host and get used to the new client. Two weeks is usually enough to know if the switch works; one extra month of HEY is cheap compared with a rushed cancellation you regret.

2. 2

   If you decide to stay on HEY, undo forwarding first

   In HEY's settings, turn off the forwarding rule. Leave the archive you imported into the new client alone — it is a snapshot, not a live mirror. If you never cancelled HEY, no data was ever lost.

3. 3

   If HEY is already closed, the address still works

   As long as you paid for year one, forwarding continues out of the closed account. HEY support can walk you through reactivating if you change your mind — but new mail only flows to a HEY inbox again after reactivation.

Migrating without downtime#

Because HEY does not speak IMAP, you cannot run two clients on one mailbox the way you can with Gmail or Fastmail. What you can do is run two mailboxes in parallel: keep HEY receiving mail while the new inbox is set up, then flip the forwarding switch once the new one is live.

The clean version is a two-week parallel. Week one: exports done, new mailbox provisioned, MBOX imported, calendar and contacts landed, new address in use for outbound. Week two: change the email on file at every important service so mail lands at the new address rather than via forwarding. Turn HEY forwarding on at the end as a safety net for anyone you missed, and cancel when ready.

The one thing you cannot avoid: while HEY is primary, you read new mail in HEY. And you cannot send from @hey.com in the new client at all — HEY is the only sender for that domain.

Where AI Emaily fits, and where it does not#

The HEY reader has several honest destinations: a custom-domain mailbox on Fastmail or Google Workspace, a privacy-first setup on Proton, Apple Mail or Mimestream on macOS, or a modern AI-triaged client on top of Gmail or Outlook. We build AI Emaily, and it fits the last: connect Gmail, Outlook or IMAP, and an approve-before-send triage agent reads what came in, drafts what needs a reply, and files what does not — with a full audit log and undo. If the Screener idea is what drew you to HEY, our cold-email filter and first-contact triage are the closest thing another client offers.

The concession, said plainly: **HEY's "Forever yours" address commitment is more generous than anything else in the paid email hosting category.** No other host we have seen will hold and forward your address indefinitely after you stop paying. If keeping the identity value of a paid @hey.com address without paying is the deciding factor, HEY is the right answer. See [AI Emaily pricing](/pricing) or the [AI Emaily vs HEY comparison](/compare/ai-emaily-vs-hey) when the fit question is bigger than address retention.