Virgin Media Email Is Moving to Junara: What to Do, and Why It May Be Time to Leave ISP Email

Written by Martyn — Marple Tech Help

If you use an @ntlworld.com, @blueyonder.co.uk, @virgin.net or @virginmedia.com address, Virgin Media is changing how your email works. Here's what is happening and what your options are.

It's also a good moment to ask a bigger question: should your email address be tied to your broadband company at all?

Details checked against Virgin Media and Junara's own information in September 2026.

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What is happening to Virgin Media email?

Virgin Media stopped issuing new email accounts in 2022, but existing accounts have carried on working. That is now changing.

In September 2026, Virgin Media announced it is handing its remaining email service over to Junara, a specialist email provider owned by the email company Atmail. This affects all Virgin Media addresses, including those ending @ntlworld.com, @blueyonder.co.uk, @virgin.net and @virginmedia.com.

The addresses aren't being switched off overnight. You'll have three choices:

1. Move your email to Junara and keep your address.
2. Download your email and move to another provider.
3. Close the account.

How long have I got?

Virgin Media is contacting customers in phases, so your deadline may be different from your neighbour's. Check the date in your own message from Virgin Media.

Once you receive that first message, you will have at least 45 days to decide what to do.

If you don't act by the deadline in your message, you won't simply lose everything immediately. Virgin Media says there will be a further 120-day recovery period during which the account can still be recovered.

Once that recovery period ends, the account and everything in it will be permanently deleted. That is at least 165 days after your first message.

So there's no need to panic, but this is definitely not something to leave in the pile.

Will keeping my Virgin Media address cost money?

If you currently have Virgin Media broadband, landline or TV, your first 12 months with Junara are free, apart from a 99p transfer fee paid to Junara. Virgin Media says customers who need extra support will be offered 18 months free.

Former Virgin Media customers who no longer have any of those services won't get the free period. They will need to take out a standard Junara plan to keep their address.

After the free period, you'll need a paid Junara subscription to keep using the address. Signing up means giving Junara a payment method, and Junara says saved payment details are used to renew your subscription automatically.

Before you sign up, check what happens at the end of your free period and how to cancel if you decide not to continue.

Junara doesn't list its prices publicly. You only see what's on offer once you start signing up.

For context, when Manx Telecom moved its customers' Manx.net addresses to Junara in 2025, the price was £65 a year or £6.50 a month per mailbox. That was a different arrangement, so treat it as context rather than a quote for Virgin Media customers.

That last one catches people out. If you've never used an authenticator app, it's worth getting some help setting it up rather than guessing, because it becomes part of how you get into your email from then on.

So what's wrong with ISP email?

There's nothing inherently bad about the email service itself. The problem is who controls the address.

For many people, an email address is much more than somewhere messages arrive. It's the address your bank, HMRC, the NHS, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, your energy supplier and dozens of other organisations have on file.

It's usually where password reset links and security warnings are sent too. It has become a key part of your digital identity.

Imagine you have used yourname@ntlworld.com since the early 2000s. Then you find a broadband deal elsewhere that would save you £20 a month.

Suddenly switching isn't so simple, because your email address is tied to your old provider.

Ofcom warns that when you switch broadband, you might have to pay to keep using the email address your old provider gave you. Some providers let you keep it free, some charge, and some hand the service to another company. Ofcom's suggestion is to move to a free email account instead.

Virgin Media's changes highlight another issue: you don't have to leave your provider for the arrangement to change.

Plenty of Virgin Media customers are happy with their broadband and have no plans to leave. Virgin Media has still decided it no longer wants to run an email service.

That's entirely Virgin Media's decision to make. But it shows why I don't think your broadband supplier should also be the custodian of your permanent email identity.

If you're weighing up a broadband switch anyway, my guides to whether you're paying too much for broadband and choosing a broadband provider in Marple cover the rest of that decision.

A better approach

For most people, I recommend an email address that is independent of whoever provides your broadband.

A Gmail or Outlook.com address isn't affected if you move from Virgin Media to BT, Sky, Vodafone or anyone else. You can change internet provider as often as you like and keep the same address.

There are paid independent email services too, and more technically minded users might choose email on their own domain name.

The real distinction isn't free versus paid. It's independent versus tied to another service.

Should I move to Junara or change address completely?

There isn't one right answer.

After 20 years, your address may be registered with hundreds of people and services. If so, paying to keep it may well be worth it for convenience.

If you do move to Junara, it says it will transfer your address, emails, contacts, tasks and forwarding settings. You can carry on using webmail, which gets an updated look, and email apps such as Outlook and Apple Mail should carry on working.

One exception: if your computer uses an older setup called POP, some of your emails may only be stored on that computer, and Junara says those may not transfer. Back them up before you do anything else.

Moving to Junara also buys you time.

But if you're going to deal with this anyway, it's an excellent opportunity to set up an independent address and gradually move away from the old one.

You don't need to do it all in a weekend. In fact, I wouldn't recommend trying.

How I would move away from an old ISP email address

The safest approach is a gradual one:

1. Create your new independent email account. Choose an address you'll be happy with for many years. Gmail and Outlook.com are sensible choices for most people. If your old mailbox is very large, check the new account's free storage allowance first, as years of emails and attachments may not fit.
2. Secure it properly. Use a strong, unique password and turn on two-step verification. Check that your recovery phone number and recovery email address are correct. My guide to why two-factor authentication matters for email explains how.
3. Update your important accounts first. Start with anything that would cause a real problem if you lost access:
   • banks and other financial providers
   • government and NHS-related accounts
   • Apple, Google and Microsoft accounts
   • utilities and insurers
4. Work through everyday accounts gradually. Shopping sites, streaming services, social media, clubs and newsletters can follow.
5. Tell friends, family and regular contacts. People are remarkably good at using an address you stopped using five years ago.
6. Keep the old mailbox running during the transition. Anything still arriving there will remind you of accounts you forgot to update.
7. Save any old email you want to keep. Download or transfer important messages, attachments, family photos and documents rather than leaving them in a mailbox you may eventually close. If your computer uses POP, remember that some emails may be stored only on that computer, so make sure those are backed up too.
8. Stop using the old address only when you're confident nothing important depends on it.

Don't rely on forwarding forever

Forwarding is very useful while you change addresses.

What I wouldn't do is set up a new address, forward the old one to it and consider the job done. That leaves exactly the same dependency in place, and the forwarding stops the moment the old mailbox closes.

The important step is changing the address your bank, Amazon, Microsoft and everyone else actually has on file.

Forwarding should be a bridge between addresses, not a permanent solution.

Watch out for Virgin Media email scams

This change is a gift to scammers.

Think about the perfect phishing email:

Thousands of Virgin Media customers are now genuinely expecting a message saying their email is changing and they need to act. That makes convincing fakes much easier to write.

One detail is especially useful: Virgin Media says its emails about this change will not contain clickable sign-up links.

If a message about your Virgin Media email has a "sign up here" or "keep my account" link, treat it with great suspicion.

Junara has also warned about scammers pretending to be Junara. It says it won't take payments over the phone, and it asks customers not to pay through links in emails.

So if a message says your account is about to close and asks you to click a link or enter your password or card details, don't let the urgency rush you.

Go to the Virgin Media website yourself, by typing the address or using a bookmark, and check from there.

Your Virgin Media email checklist

Print this and keep it by the computer while you work through it.

One final thought

ISP email addresses made sense when home internet first took off. Your provider gave you a connection, a modem, some web space and an email address, and for many people that address became part of everyday life.

Things have changed.

We switch broadband more readily, and our inboxes hold far more important information. An email address is also often the key to getting back into almost everything else we do online.

That makes independence much more valuable.

If you've used an ntlworld, blueyonder, Virgin Media or other broadband-provider address for years, there's no need to abandon it tomorrow.

But it's worth asking yourself one simple question:

If the answer is no, now is a good time to start reducing that dependency.