This guide describes how to migrate a Zimbra deployment to Axigen — both the email and the personal information (PIM) data.
Zimbra migration support is available starting with Axigen X7 (10.7.0), through the Axigen Migrator 1.6.0. It supports Zimbra 8.x – 10.x (validated against Zimbra 10.1.18). Migrating account preferences additionally requires an Axigen X6 (or later) target.
Overview
A Zimbra migration has two parts, handled by two complementary mechanisms:
Email messages are migrated by Axigen's Automatic Migration, which pulls each account's mail over IMAP the first time the user logs in to Axigen. See Migrate to Axigen Using Auto Migration and the WebAdmin Automatic Migration reference.
Personal information data — contacts, calendars, tasks, and (optionally) account preferences — is migrated by the Axigen Migrator, the companion tool packaged with Axigen. With Axigen Migrator 1.6.0, Zimbra joins Kerio Connect and CommuniGate Pro as a supported source.
Unlike Kerio Connect and CommuniGate Pro, Zimbra does not expose PIM data over IMAP. The Axigen Migrator detects the Zimbra source automatically (using the IMAP ID command), authenticates over Zimbra's SOAP API, exports contacts as vCard and calendars and tasks as iCalendar over Zimbra's REST interface, and writes each item into the matching Axigen folder. It keeps track of what it has already imported, so the migration can be re-run safely without creating duplicates. The way you invoke the Axigen Migrator does not change between source servers.
What Gets Migrated
Data | Migrated | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Contacts | Yes | Includes contact photos. Zimbra's "Emailed Contacts" are placed in Axigen's Collected Addresses. |
Calendars | Yes | Includes recurring events and user-created sub-calendars. |
Tasks | Yes | Task lists are migrated as Axigen tasks. |
Preferences (opt-in) | Yes | Vacation / out-of-office, timezone, signatures, and allow / block lists. Requires an Axigen X6 (or later) target. |
Email messages | Separately | Handled by Axigen Automatic Migration over IMAP. |
The following are not migrated: mail forwarding settings, Sieve filter rules, notes, distribution lists, and public or shared folders. These follow the same boundaries as the existing Kerio Connect and CommuniGate Pro migration paths.
Timezone is migrated when the Zimbra account uses a standard IANA timezone identifier (for example, America/New_York); other values are mapped where possible.
Prerequisites
A source running Zimbra 8.x – 10.x.
IMAP enabled for each Zimbra user to be migrated. On the Zimbra server, enable it per account with:
On the Axigen side, the Axigen Migrator authenticates using IMAP plain login. Enable Normal Login and AUTH PLAIN under Services → IMAP → Encryption and Authentication (as required by Automatic Migration in general).
The target account must already exist in Axigen. Automatic Migration creates it when the user first logs in, which is also when email is pulled over IMAP.
To migrate preferences, an Axigen X6 (or later) target, since preferences are written through the Axigen Mailbox REST API.
If the Zimbra server uses a self-signed certificate (common in test environments), allow the Axigen Migrator to skip certificate verification with
insecureSkipVerify = true. Do not use this in production.
Folder Mapping
Zimbra folder | Axigen target |
|---|---|
Contacts | Contacts |
Emailed Contacts | Collected Addresses |
Calendar | Calendar |
User-created sub-calendars | Same name (created if absent) |
Tasks | Tasks |
Trash, Distribution Lists | Not migrated |
Zimbra folder names use Unicode; verify the resulting folder mapping after migration.
Configuring PIM Migration
The data types the Axigen Migrator brings over are controlled in config.toml. Contacts, calendars, and tasks are migrated by default. Preference migration is opt-in and requires an Axigen X6 (or later) target:
The source address configured for the migration doubles as the Zimbra SOAP and REST host; Zimbra credentials are supplied at invocation, not stored in config.toml.
Running the Migration
As part of Automatic Migration (recommended). When you configure Automatic Migration in WebAdmin and select the Axigen Migrator, it is invoked automatically for each account at first login, right after the email pull. See Migrate to Axigen Using Auto Migration for the WebAdmin and CLI setup.
Manually, for a single account:
Use -o for a one-shot run or -q for queue mode.
Notes and Troubleshooting
Re-runs are safe. The Axigen Migrator tracks every item it imports, so you can re-run a migration — for example, to pick up items created after the first run — without producing duplicates.
Signatures. Both the HTML and plain-text bodies of a Zimbra signature are migrated. Selecting a default signature is not applied on Axigen 10.7.
Large calendars (thousands of events) are migrated in full.
Folder names. Because Zimbra uses Unicode folder names, review the migrated folder structure and adjust any names if needed.