Moving Google Workspace When Your Company Rebrands

A company rebrand is exciting until you realise it means migrating years of email history. Clients, suppliers, and prospects have emailed your old address. Contracts, invoices, and project files live in your old Google Workspace. If you simply abandon the old account, you lose access to all of it.

Here's how to handle a Workspace rebrand migration without losing anything — and without calling in an IT consultant.

The problem with just setting up a new Workspace

When you set up a new Google Workspace for your rebranded business, Google doesn't offer a migration path from the old account. You can keep both accounts active and pay for both — expensive and confusing — or you can try to manually export and re-import everything, which is error-prone and time-consuming.

The Gmail import tool exists but imports via POP3, which doesn't transfer labels and can take weeks for large accounts. Google Takeout lets you download an archive, but re-importing it into a new account is a manual process with no official tooling.

What needs to move

A typical rebrand migration involves three categories:

Email history. Years of client conversations, supplier agreements, order confirmations, and internal communications. These don't just have sentimental value — they're often legal records. Losing them isn't just inconvenient; it can be costly if a dispute arises.

Google Drive files. Proposals, contracts, project files, and shared documents. If these are shared with clients or collaborators via Drive links, those links will break when the old account closes.

Contacts. Your Google Contacts list doesn't transfer automatically. Export it from contacts.google.com before closing the old account.

The migration process

Step 1 — Set up the new Workspace first. Don't close the old account. Get the new account working and test it before you touch anything in the old one.

Step 2 — Set up forwarding from old to new. In the old account's Gmail Settings → Forwarding, forward all new incoming mail to the new address. This buys you time during the transition — senders who don't yet know your new address will still reach you.

Step 3 — Migrate email and Drive. Use GTransfer to move Gmail and Drive files from the old Workspace to the new one. Connect both accounts via OAuth, select all labels and Drive folders, and start the migration. GTransfer preserves label structure, read status, and all attachments.

Step 4 — Verify the migration. Search for a few specific emails in the new account — a key client's name, a supplier you emailed last year. Confirm they arrived with the correct labels. Check that Drive files are accessible.

Step 5 — Notify contacts. Send a "we've moved" email from both your old and new address, directing people to update their records. For important clients, a personal call or personalised email is worth it.

Step 6 — Set an auto-responder on the old account. Before eventually closing the old account, set up a vacation auto-responder that tells anyone who emails the old address about the new one. Leave this running for at least three to six months.

What about shared Drive documents?

If you have documents shared with clients via Drive links, those links will break when the old account closes. Before migrating, make note of any actively shared documents and reshare them from the new account once the migration is complete. Send updated links to anyone who had access to the old ones.

How long does a Workspace migration take?

For a typical small business Workspace — a few years of email and a moderately full Drive — GTransfer usually completes the migration in a few hours. It runs in the background, so you can continue working while it runs. Larger accounts with 20+ GB of email may take overnight.

The cost: GTransfer Essential is £9 one-time for unlimited Gmail and Drive transfer. Given that a Workspace rebrand migration is a one-time event, that's a reasonable cost to avoid the alternative (paying an IT consultant, or spending a weekend doing it manually).