I went looking for an export button inside Hostinger’s current Webmail and found nothing. No download icon, no export menu, not even a buried setting.
That sent me digging into the older interface, where the feature turns out to still live, fully functional, just not where most people would think to look.
Here is exactly where to find it, how the three export formats differ in practice, and what to do once your mailbox is bigger than a browser download can comfortably handle.
Why the Export Option Is Missing From the New Hostinger Mail
Hostinger has been migrating customers to a redesigned Webmail with a cleaner inbox, a search bar, and an AI assistant shortcut built in.
I opened it and checked every menu along the top bar. There is a Settings gear, an eye icon for read receipts, and quick links to contacts and upgrades, but no way to download a single message, let alone a whole folder.
This is a common pattern when a hosting company rebuilds its webmail from scratch. Export and import tools tend to get rebuilt last, since they matter less to daily use than composing or reading mail. That does not help you if you need your messages today, though, so the export tool remains parked in the old version for now.
A yellow banner at the top of the old interface warns that the current version will be discontinued sometime in 2026, with no exact date given.
I asked Hostinger’s support assistant Kodee directly whether export would land in the new Mail before that happens, and there is no confirmed timeline yet.
For a closer look at how this platform handles email overall, I put it through a full set of tests in my hands-on Hostinger Email review, covering deliverability, setup, and support response times beyond just this one feature.
Step 1: Open the Old Webmail Version
Clicking through hPanel now drops you straight into the redesigned Webmail, with no obvious link back to the old one.
The reliable way in is a direct URL:
- Log into hPanel and go to Emails.
- Click Manage next to the address you want to export from, then Webmail. This will open the new interface.
- Instead, go directly to mail.hostinger.com/old in your browser while logged into hPanel. This loads the old Webmail, export tool included, bypassing the new interface entirely.
I tested this URL directly, and it worked without needing to click through any “switch back” option, since the new interface does not appear to offer one. Bookmark that link if you expect to export more than once, since hPanel itself will keep sending you to the new version by default.
Step 2: Select the Messages You Want to Export
Export only works one folder at a time. Inbox, Sent, and Junk each need a separate pass, so plan for that before you start rather than assuming one click grabs everything.
Click Select in the toolbar to see your options:
| Select option | What it grabs |
|---|---|
| Selection | Only the messages you have manually checked |
| All | Every message in the current folder |
| Current page | Just what is visible on screen, if your folder spans multiple pages |
| Unread | Only messages you have not opened yet |
| Flagged | Only messages you have starred or flagged |
| Invert | Reverses your current selection |
| None | Clears everything |
I tested All on a five-message inbox and every message highlighted at once, confirming it pulls the entire folder rather than just the current page, which matters if your inbox spans several pages of results.
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Step 3: Choose the Right Export Format
Click More, then Download, and you will see three formats.
Which one you pick should depend on what you are actually going to do with the file afterward, not just habit.
| Format | What you get | Best for | Key limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source (.eml) | One raw message file | Saving a single important email, such as a contract or receipt | One email per download, no batching |
| Mbox (.zip) | All selected messages combined into one file | A single backup archive of a whole folder | No published cap, but very large folders should be batched |
| Maildir (.zip) | Each message saved as its own file, folder-structured | Moving mail into a system or client that expects individual message files | Same batching advice as Mbox |
The EML restriction is not a bug. I selected several messages and tried Source (.eml) anyway, and Hostinger’s own documentation confirms it directly: EML only ever exports one message at a time, by design. If you need more than a single email, skip straight to Mbox or Maildir.
I ran a real export using Mbox with all five messages in my test inbox selected, and the download started immediately as a single file, INBOX.zip, weighing in under 20KB.
That gives you a rough sense of scale. A folder with a few thousand short messages is still likely to stay well within a normal download, but attachments will push the size up fast, so factor those in if your mailbox is attachment-heavy.
Step 4: Verify the Download and Store It Safely
Once the file lands, open it and check the contents against what is showing in Webmail before you consider the job done.
I unzipped my export and every message from the folder was present and readable, matching what I saw on screen.
The zip file sitting in your downloads folder is the only copy that exists outside your live mailbox.
If you delete it, or your device fails, that backup is gone. Move it somewhere durable, such as an external drive or a cloud storage account that is not tied to your hosting account.
Exporting a Large Mailbox? Switch to an IMAP Client
Hostinger has not published an official cap on how many messages you can include in one Mbox or Maildir download.
In practice, if you are exporting years of accumulated mail rather than a single folder, doing it in smaller batches through Webmail is safer than trying to grab everything at once.
For a genuinely large mailbox, connecting an email client over IMAP is the more reliable path, and it is a fully supported method rather than a workaround:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| IMAP host | imap.hostinger.com |
| IMAP port | 993 (SSL) |
| SMTP host | smtp.hostinger.com |
| SMTP port | 465 (SSL), or 587 with TLS/STARTTLS if you hit encryption errors |
Thunderbird is a practical choice here. Once connected, it can export an entire mailbox to Mbox or PST directly from the client, without the folder-by-folder limitation you run into in old Webmail.
This is also the same route worth using if you are consolidating mail from several folders into one archive rather than downloading each separately.
What the Import Option Tells You About Restoring Later
While I was in the Download submenu, I noticed Import sitting a few rows above it in the same More dropdown. I did not run a full restore during this test, but its presence is a useful signal: Hostinger built import and export as a matching pair in this interface, which means a Mbox file you export today is very likely importable back into a mailbox later through that same menu, rather than being a one-way download with no return path.
Hostinger’s export tool works cleanly once you track it down, and Mbox or Maildir will cover almost every real backup need.
The catch is that it lives in an interface Hostinger is actively phasing out, so export what matters now rather than assuming the option will still be there next time you look.
