How to Leave GoDaddy Microsoft 365 Without Breaking Email

This is the sequence we use. Follow it in order and email keeps flowing the entire time.

1. Confirm your tenant and admin access. Sign in at admin.microsoft.com with a Global Administrator account. If you can see your users and domains there, you have the access you need. If GoDaddy holds the only admin account, request Global Admin rights or a handover before you start. This is the single most important step.
2. Find your Microsoft tenant ID and current licences. In the Microsoft 365 admin centre, note which licences you have (Basic, Standard or Premium) and how many seats. You will reassign these same licences, not rebuild anything.
3. Move the billing relationship. Your new Microsoft partner sends a partner relationship request (a request to become your reseller and, optionally, to help administer your tenant) to your tenant. You accept it from the admin centre. This tells Microsoft that a different partner now bills your licences.
4. Reassign the licences into your own tenant. The new partner provisions the same Microsoft 365 Business licences against your existing tenant and users. Each mailbox keeps its existing licence until the new one is assigned, so nobody loses service mid-switch.
5. Cancel the GoDaddy subscription only after the new licences are live. Never cancel GoDaddy first. Confirm every user has a working licence under the new partner, then stop the GoDaddy billing at its renewal date.
6. Verify mail flow. Send and receive a test email on two or three mailboxes. Check Outlook, webmail and mobile. Confirm shared mailboxes and distribution lists still work.

At no point in this sequence does a mailbox get deleted, exported or recreated. The licences change hands. The data does not move.

This is the reassurance worth being precise about, because fear of broken email is the main reason businesses stay overpaying.

When you switch the billing relationship for Microsoft 365, the following stay exactly where they are:

• Mailboxes and email history. Every message, folder and rule.
• Files and SharePoint. OneDrive and SharePoint documents, with their sharing permissions.
• Teams. Channels, chats and files.
• User accounts, passwords and the domain on the mailboxes. Logins do not change.

The reason is simple. A licence is a billing entitlement, not the data itself. Your email lives in the Microsoft tenant. Moving the reseller that bills you changes who invoices you and who can help administer the tenant. It does not touch the mailbox storage, the address, or the MX records that deliver your mail. There is no mailbox export, no cutover, no period where mail bounces.

This is different from a true mailbox migration, where you move data from one tenant to another (for example, leaving Google Workspace for Microsoft 365). Leaving GoDaddy is usually not that. In most cases you keep the same tenant and simply change who bills it.

If you bought your domain name from GoDaddy as well as your Microsoft 365, there is one more area to handle. It is separate from the licence move and you can do it on your own timeline.

• Your domain registration. This is who you renew the domain name with. You can leave it at GoDaddy or transfer it to another registrar later. Keeping it at GoDaddy for now does not stop you moving your licences.
• Your DNS records. The MX, SPF, DKIM and CNAME records that route your email and prove your domain. These usually do not need to change at all when you switch your Microsoft partner, because your mailboxes stay in the same tenant.

The practical advice: do not touch DNS during the licence move unless you have to. Email breaks when MX records are changed incorrectly, not when a billing relationship changes. If you later choose to move the domain away from GoDaddy, do that as a separate, planned step, and copy every existing DNS record across before flipping the nameservers. When in doubt, leave the domain and DNS at GoDaddy and just move the licences first.

Both are legitimate. Choose by how your account is set up and how much risk you want to carry.

Do it yourself when:

• You already have Global Admin access to your tenant.
• Your tenant is your own, not a fully provider-managed one.
• You have a handful of straightforward mailboxes and no complex mail routing.

In that case the steps above are an afternoon of careful work, and the only cost is your time.

Use paid guided migration when:

• GoDaddy holds a provider-managed tenant and you are not sure you have full control.
• You have shared mailboxes, distribution groups, or third-party apps connected to email.
• You want someone to verify mail flow and handle the domain handover so you do not have to.

Dead Simple 365 sells the same Microsoft 365 Business licences below Microsoft's list price, provisioned into your own tenant, and offers a paid guided migration for the cases that need it. The licences are self-service. The migration is there when the situation is messier than a simple billing swap.

Two clocks are running, and getting the order right saves money.

First, your GoDaddy renewal date. GoDaddy Microsoft 365 renews at £15.99 per user per month ex VAT. You want the new licences live and verified before that renewal bills, so you are not paying GoDaddy for another year you did not intend to keep.

Second, the Microsoft price rise on 1 July 2026. This is the first Microsoft 365 suite increase since 2022. From that date Microsoft's own list prices rise: Business Basic from £4.60 to £5.40, Business Standard from £9.60 to £10.80, with Business Premium holding at £16.90 (all ex VAT). Buying an annual term before then fixes your rate for twelve months.

For comparison, Dead Simple 365 annual upfront pricing is £4.23 for Basic, £8.83 for Standard and £15.55 for Premium per user per month ex VAT, with no teaser price that jumps at renewal, not an intro rate. A 25-seat business on the GoDaddy renewal rate of £15.99 pays around £4,797 a year for Standard-equivalent licences. The same 25 seats on our Business Standard cost £2,649 a year, ex VAT.

Before you move anything, the sensible first step is to count what you actually use. Many businesses on GoDaddy pay for seats nobody logs into. A free licence audit shows your real seat count and the annual saving before you commit to anything.