VelvetDubai

SILK · an idea, not yet built

Changing email provider should not cost you nine years of history.

Moving a mailbox from Outlook to Gmail, or back, or off either, usually means losing your folder structure, breaking every thread, and a weekend nobody volunteers for. SILK moves the whole thing across, intact, while the old mailbox keeps working.

Tell us your migration What it would do

Example · migration in progress

Outlook → Gmail

Messages48,210 / 71,004
Folders → labels126 mapped
Attachments9.4 GB
Contacts1,847 moved
Calendar events3,902 moved

Nothing is deleted at the source. If it stops halfway, it resumes from where it stopped.

What it would do

Move everything, in either direction, without a weekend.

Migration tools exist. Most are priced for IT departments, assume a systems administrator is driving, and treat a small business with eleven mailboxes as a rounding error.

Either direction

Outlook to Gmail, Gmail to Outlook

Both ways, and between accounts on the same provider. Changing host, splitting a company, or consolidating two mailboxes into one.

Any mailbox

Not just the big two

Microsoft 365, Exchange, Google Workspace, plain IMAP, and the cPanel mailbox that came with a hosting plan a decade ago.

Structure

Folders become labels, and back

Outlook nests folders; Gmail uses labels that do not nest the same way. The mapping between them is most of the actual work, and it is where every cheap tool gives up.

Threads

Conversations stay conversations

Replies keep their parents. A migration that scatters a four-year client thread into ninety loose messages has technically moved your email and practically destroyed it.

Everything else

Contacts, calendars, attachments

A mailbox is rarely only messages. Calendar entries, address books and the files hanging off both move with it.

Teams

Eleven mailboxes, one job

Whole-company moves run as one migration with one progress view, instead of eleven separate afternoons and a spreadsheet tracking which ones failed.

Safe by default

Nothing is deleted at the source

A migration copies. The old mailbox stays exactly as it was until you decide otherwise, so a bad run costs time and not history.

Check first

A dry run before anything moves

It reads both mailboxes and reports what it found: how many messages, how deep the folders go, what will not map cleanly. All of that before a single item is copied.

Resumable

It survives being interrupted

Rate limits, expired tokens, a closed laptop. The job records what it has already moved and picks up there rather than starting again or duplicating.

Both ends

Whatever you are on, whatever you are going to.

From

  • Microsoft 365 / Outlook
  • Exchange
  • Google Workspace / Gmail
  • IMAP, any host
  • cPanel & shared hosting mail
⇄

To

  • Google Workspace / Gmail
  • Microsoft 365 / Outlook
  • Exchange
  • IMAP, any host
  • A second account on the same provider

Three situations

When a mailbox has to move.

Worked examples. SILK is not built. This is the product being described, not one you can buy.

01

The business that outgrew its hosting mailbox

Today

Eleven staff on mailboxes that came free with a hosting plan. Moving to Google Workspace means somebody manually exporting eleven accounts, one at a time, and discovering afterwards that the folder structure did not survive.

With SILK

One job, eleven mailboxes, one progress view. Folders map to labels, threads stay intact, and the old mailboxes keep receiving mail until the change is confirmed good.

The migration stops being a project and becomes an afternoon nobody notices.

02

The partner who left, and took a shared inbox with them

Today

A business splits. Years of client correspondence live in one account that now belongs to one side. Separating it means forwarding rules, a personal archive file, and an argument.

With SILK

Copy the mailbox to a new account, filtered to what belongs there. Both sides keep a complete, threaded record rather than one side keeping everything and the other keeping a PST file nobody can open.

Copying, not moving, is what makes this survivable.

03

The enquiries that need to land somewhere new

Today

A business changes provider and every integration pointed at the old address quietly stops working. Nobody notices until a customer asks why nobody replied.

With SILK

Because it is Velvet software, WEFT and LOOM follow the move. Where enquiries and reports are delivered updates with the mailbox, rather than being one more thing to remember.

This is the only part of SILK that has anything to do with the other two products, and it is the reason to build it here rather than anywhere else.

Status

An idea, written down so it is not lost.

SILK is not being built yet. WEFT is live with a pilot client and LOOM is in development. This page exists so the thinking survives, not because there is anything to sell.

A migration tool asks for more trust than anything else we make. It needs access to a mailbox, the most sensitive thing most businesses own. If it gets built, it gets built with scoped, revocable access, nothing stored longer than the job needs, and nothing deleted at the source, ever.

If you have a migration coming up, tell us about it. Which providers, how many mailboxes, what you are dreading. Real migrations are what decide whether this is worth making.

Get in touch

What would you be moving, and away from what?

That answer is what tells us whether SILK is a product or a good sentence. Either way it is a useful thing for us to hear.

velvetworksco@gmail.com