Hello. I currently have Microsoft 365 Business Professional through GoDaddy. Their monthly rate just went up 20% to $21.95 per month. I have my business domain through GoDaddy as well. I can get 365 Personal directly through MS for $69.95 per year. If I do this, will I be able to move my current email folders and files in Outlook and my OneDrive files to Personal? And my custom email address - ******@fabulouscopy.com?

It's actually very easy to migrate your data from one Office 365 tenant to another. It can be done fairly cheap too through third-party tools, or even free depending on how much data you're looking at migration. I'm a member of the community just like you and not affiliated with Microsoft. I'd be happy to guide you through the process though. Here's the gist:

1. If you're the only user, you can make an Outlook PST, Otherwise, consider using a thirdparty tool (I recommend MigrationWiz BitTitan)
2. Once you have the data moved from one tenant to another, you'll need to defederate the domain from GoDaddy, This is as simple as a few PowerShell commands.
3. Lastly, add the domain to your new Office 365 tenant and add it as the primary alias for all users.

If you need further help with this, I can give you step by step instructions through the process.

Hi Biljana,

Of course. Since writing that reply I’ve actually discovered an even more efficient way of doing this. Since GoDaddy is still technically Office 365, you can actually just defederate from GoDaddy and keep your existing tenant. This is probably the most ideal way of doing this, since it means nothing has to be migrated. It’s more cost-effective, faster, and not to mention avoids the risk of anything not being migrated (for instance, last I recall BitTitan has some side effects when migrating calendar invites).

Note before doing this that you should make users aware that their passwords for Office 365 will be reset. I recommend providing them with a new temporary password in advance so they will know it and won’t get locked out of Office 365 when prompted to sign in after the defederation.

Once you’ve done your preparation, here are the steps you’ll need to take:

1. Sign into Office 365 (https://office.com/) with a global administrator account – this is usually the account you use to buy your licenses and set up users on the GoDaddy side.
2. Go to the Entra Admin Center (https://entra.microsoft.com/) and select Users > All users. Find the user with user principal name ******@NETORGXXXXX.onmicrosoft.com (the NETORG name may vary). Select this user and reset its password. Take note of the temporary password.
3. Open an incognito/private browsing window and sign into this admin account. You will be prompted to change the password. Change it to something you will remember as this account will be the one you use during the changeover.
4. Next, you need to remove the domain federation from GoDaddy. For this, you’ll need access to PowerShell. If you’re on Windows, this is installed natively. If not, go download the version for Mac/Linux from https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases. In order to remove federation from GoDaddy, run the following commands. If you’re new to PowerShell, note that any line starting with a # symbol is a comment intended to explain what you should be seeing: Install-Module Microsoft.Graph.IdentityDirectoryManagement -Scope CurrentUser

   Type Y for any prompts requesting confirmation to install if needed

   Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "Directory.Read.All","Domain.Read.All","Domain.ReadWrite.All","Directory.AccessAsUser.All”

   Enter the ******@NETORGXXXXX.onmicrosoft.com credentials when prompted

   Run the command below and confirm that your GoDaddy.com domain says "Federated":

   Get-MgDomain

   The below command will update the domain to be "Managed" - replace with your GoDaddy domain:

   Update-MgDomain -DomainId "your-GoDaddy.com-domain-here" -Authentication Managed

   Run the below command again to confirm that the GoDaddy domain now says Managed instead of Federated:

   Get-MgDomain
5. With GoDaddy no longer having federation over the domain, you should now have access to the Microsoft Admin Center. Navigate to https://admin.microsoft.com/ and sign in with the ******@NETORGXXXXX.onmicrosoft.com account. On the left tree, select Users > Active users. Select each user except the admin user and reset their passwords. Note that you can select multiple users at once using the check box to the left of their name and use the reset password button on the top banner to reset multiple passwords at once.
6. Select your own user (an actual user account, not the ******@NETORGXXXXX.onmicrosoft.com account), and under the Account section, select Manage roles. Add the global administrator role to this account.
7. Sign out of the ******@NETORGXXXXX.onmicrosoft.com account, and sign in with your own global administrator account. Go back to the Microsoft Admin Center.
8. Back in the Microsoft Admin Center under Users > Active users again, select the ******@NETORGXXXXX.onmicrosoft.com account, and delete the user. This is one of two steps you need to take to avoid having GoDaddy delete your users when you cancel your subscription.
9. Next, you’ll need to buy the licenses you need for each user. When you cancel GoDaddy, all licenses you have with them will be removed. Therefore, you’ll need to buy the same number of licenses you already have before cancelling your subscription with GoDaddy. Depending on whether or not you’re using a reseller for this, these steps may vary. But if you’re buying straight from Microsoft, you can buy licenses from the Microsoft Admin Center from the left tree under Billing > Purchase Services (If you don’t see Billing, select Show all). Buy the same number of licenses you currently have. You say you have Business Essentials, which is the same as Microsoft Business Basic in Microsoft 365 (GoDaddy renames these). If you want the Office 365 desktop apps, you’ll need to go for Business Standard or higher.
10. Next, still inside the Microsoft Admin Center, on the left tree select Settings. (If you don’t see this, select Show all first). Under Settings, select Partner relationships. Find GoDaddy in the list of partners and select Remove Roles. Make sure GoDaddy has no roles before proceeding. This is the second step to ensuring GoDaddy has no access to your tenant and it is very important. If you do not perform this step, when you cancel your GoDaddy subscription, your Office 365 users will be deleted.
11. Lastly, go back to the GoDaddy portal and cancel your renewal of your subscription. At the end of your term, all licenses bought from GoDaddy will be removed from your tenant. This is why you buy the additional licenses.
12. Lastly, you can change your SharePoint URL to no longer be NETORGXXXXX by following this guide from Microsoft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STI_oGRB3w0. This step is optional but would allow your SharePoint URLs to begin with a prefix of your choice.

I hope this helps. If you’d still prefer the steps for migrating to a new Office 365 tenant, let me know I can provide those as well.

Please do not hesitate to let me know if I can be of further assistance.

We actually have a team at Godaddy that can help you migrate your emails to Microsoft directly. They do all the work for you. Just give us a call and tell them you want to migrate emails directly to Microsoft :)

Thanks for your reply, Palcouk. That's pretty much what I thought. Sounds like it's not worth it to move everything to MS. What do you mean by Exchange?

At least GoDaddy has a somewhat cheaper 365 solution called Online Essentials. I'll switch to that version from Business Professional unless you see a reason not to do this for a micro-home business.

O365 Personal/Family does not include Exchange

And no you will not be able to use O365 P or F with your GoDaddy domain/email once GoDaddy is cancelled

There is a whole complicated process to go through to transfer the Domain to MS, an O365 Bus version