If your company still runs email on Amazon WorkMail, there is a date you should circle on the calendar. AWS has announced that support for the service ends on March 31, 2027. After that, the console and the mailboxes stored inside it will no longer be reachable. New sign-ups already closed on April 30, 2026, so the platform is clearly on its way out.
Today is October 31, 2026, which leaves roughly five months. That sounds like a lot until you list what a mail move really involves. This guide explains why an Amazon WorkMail to Google Workspace migration makes sense, how to plan it, and where a dedicated tool can save you a lot of trouble.
Why Waiting Is the Riskiest Option
Many teams treat a shutdown notice like a distant problem. Email is rarely a distant problem. Contracts, invoices, customer threads and approvals all sit in mailboxes, and people open them daily without thinking about where they live.
When support ends, you lose access to the admin console. You also lose the ability to export data in a calm, controlled way. If a mailbox needs attention in April and nobody can reach it, you are left with no good options. Starting early gives you room for testing, user training and fixes when something goes sideways, and something usually does.
There is also the matter of timing across the whole organization. Finance closes quarters, sales teams chase targets, and IT is often stretched thin. A migration squeezed into the final weeks competes with all of that. A migration started now can be scheduled around it.
Why Google Workspace Is a Popular Landing Spot
WorkMail users tend to be small and mid-sized businesses, and Google Workspace fits that profile well. Gmail is familiar to almost everyone, so the learning curve for staff is short. Calendar, Drive, Docs and Meet come bundled, which means you can retire a few separate subscriptions at once.
Administration is another plus. Adding a user, resetting a password or setting a sharing policy takes minutes in the Admin console. Storage is pooled and scales by plan, and security controls such as two-step verification and device management are built in. For a company leaving a service that is being discontinued, moving to a platform with a long future matters as much as any single feature.
Step One: Take Stock of What You Have
Before moving anything, write down what exists. Count your mailboxes, including shared ones, resource mailboxes for meeting rooms, and any old accounts for former employees that someone still needs. Check mailbox sizes, because a handful of very large accounts will take far longer than the rest.
Also list the items that live outside plain email. Calendars, contacts, distribution groups and aliases all need a plan. A common mistake is to focus on messages and forget that people rely on their calendar invites and address books just as much.
Step Two: Prepare Google Workspace
Set up your Google Workspace account and verify your domain. Create user accounts that match your WorkMail addresses so that mail has somewhere to land. Decide how you will handle aliases and groups, and set your security baseline before users arrive, not after.
Do not change your MX records yet. Mail should keep flowing into WorkMail while you copy data across. Switching too early splits incoming messages between two systems, which confuses everyone.
Step Three: Choose Your Migration Method
You have two broad paths. The manual route uses IMAP-based tools or Google’s own migration utilities. These work, but they have limits. They often handle email well and struggle with calendars and contacts, and they need careful setup for every single user, which gets tedious past a few dozen mailboxes. Errors can be hard to trace, and re-running a failed job may create duplicates.
The second path is a purpose-built migration tool. This is where Shoviv Amazon WorkMail to G Suite Migration comes in. It is designed to move WorkMail data to Google Workspace, covering emails, contacts and calendars, with a simple interface that does not demand deep technical knowledge. If you search for an Amazon WorkMail to Google Workspace migration tool, you will find several options, and Shoviv is one that stays focused on exactly this job.
A few reasons teams lean toward a dedicated tool:
It can handle several mailboxes in one project, which cuts down on repeated manual setup.
Folder structure is kept, so users open Gmail and find their mail organized the way they left it.
Contacts and calendars come along with messages instead of being treated as an afterthought.
A trial version lets you test the process on real data before you commit to a license.
That last point deserves attention. Whatever method you pick, run a pilot first. Shoviv provides a free trial, so you can try it on a small group and see how your own data behaves before buying anything.
Step Four: Run a Pilot Migration
Pick two or three mailboxes, ideally from different roles, and migrate them first. Ask those users to check that folders look right, attachments open, and calendar entries show the correct times. Time zones are a classic trouble spot, so look at recurring meetings in particular.
Use the pilot to measure speed too. If a 10 GB mailbox takes several hours, you can estimate the whole project more honestly and plan your cutover window with fewer surprises.
Step Five: Migrate in Batches
Once the pilot looks clean, move the remaining mailboxes in groups. Start with less critical teams and finish with executives and shared mailboxes, so any lessons learned reach the sensitive accounts before you touch them.
Tell users what is happening and when. A short email explaining the schedule, what changes for them and who to contact is worth the five minutes it takes to write. People are far more forgiving of a transition when they know it is coming.
Step Six: Cut Over and Verify
When the bulk of the data is across, update your MX records to point to Google. DNS changes can take a few hours to spread, so choose a quiet time, such as a weekend. If your tool supports incremental or delta passes, run one after the switch to catch any messages that arrived during the transition.
Then verify. Spot check mailboxes, confirm that sending and receiving works in both directions, and ask users to report anything missing. Keep WorkMail untouched for a short period as a safety net, but do not let that period drift anywhere near March 31.
Step Seven: Export a Backup Before You Close
Even after a clean migration, keep a copy of the original data. Export what you need for compliance or legal reasons while the console is still open. Once support ends, that option disappears, so treat the backup as part of the project and not an optional extra.
A Practical Timeline
If you start in November, a sensible plan looks like this: finish inventory and Google setup by mid November, run the pilot in early December, complete batch migrations through January, and cut over in February. That leaves March as buffer time for stragglers and cleanup. Every month you delay eats directly into that buffer.
Final Thoughts
The deadline is fixed, and it will not move because your team is busy. A well-planned Amazon WorkMail to Google Workspace migration is routine work when you give it enough time, and a stressful scramble when you do not. Take inventory, prepare Google Workspace, test with a pilot, and choose a method that handles calendars and contacts as well as email. A specialized option such as Shoviv Amazon WorkMail to G Suite Migration can take much of the manual effort out of the process.
Start this month, and March 31, 2027 will pass as just another date on the calendar.
