You have decided to leave your host. The site is slow, the support is useless, or the renewal invoice made you flinch. Then you remember the last time somebody moved a site and it was down for two days, and you put it off for another six months.
Migrations go wrong in a small number of predictable ways. Get the order right and it is a boring afternoon.
Do these before you touch anything
Most of the risk is removed before the move starts.
- Take a full backup and download it. Files and database, stored somewhere that is not either host. If both ends fail you still have your site.
- Confirm you control the domain. Log into the registrar yourself. If your developer or old host holds it, sort that out first, because a migration you cannot point DNS at is not a migration.
- Write down your current PHP version and any custom server settings: memory limit, max upload size, cron setup, redirects living in your server config.
- List anything hard-coded. Old server IPs, absolute file paths, API integrations with IP allowlists. These are what break silently after a move.
- Lower your DNS TTL to 300 seconds, at least 24 hours before the switch. This is the single most skipped step and it is why some migrations drag on for days.
The fix: if you do only one thing from this list, do the TTL change. It costs nothing and it turns a 48-hour DNS propagation into about five minutes.
Copy first, switch later
The safe sequence is build the new site fully, verify it, then move traffic. Never switch DNS and then start fixing things.
Move files and database to the new host. Match the PHP version to what the old server ran, so you are only changing one variable at a time. You can upgrade PHP after the move, deliberately, with a backup in hand.
Then test the new site before DNS points at it, using a hosts file entry on your own machine or a temporary URL from the new host. If you use a temporary URL, be aware that WordPress will generate links against it and some plugins will cache that address, so it is a testing tool, not a soft launch.
Work through a real checklist on the new copy. Homepage and a few interior pages. Images loading, not just present. A form submission that actually arrives in an inbox. Login. Admin area. If you sell anything, a full test transaction end to end. Permalinks, especially anything that used a rule in the old server config.
The switch, and the freeze around it
Pick a genuinely quiet window. For most businesses that is early morning midweek, not Friday evening, because Friday evening is how you spend a weekend on it.
Announce a content freeze. Between the moment you copy the database and the moment DNS finishes moving, anything anybody adds to the old site is on the wrong copy and will vanish. For a store this matters most: orders placed during the window can land on the old site. Either sync the database again right before cutover or put the store in maintenance mode for the transition.
Then update the DNS records at your registrar, watch traffic arrive at the new host, and keep both sites running.
The fix: do not cancel the old host on the same day. Keep it paid for at least a week, ideally two. It is the cheapest insurance in this entire process and it is the step people skip to save $15.
The week after, when the quiet failures show up
The site looks fine and something is still wrong. Check these.
- Email. If your email was on the old host, moving DNS can take it down. Confirm MX records survived the change and send yourself a test.
- Transactional email from the site. Order confirmations and form notifications often stop after a move because the new server's IP is not authorised. Check your SPF and DKIM records.
- SSL. Make sure a valid certificate is installed on the new host and that the site forces HTTPS. Mixed content warnings after a migration are extremely common.
- Search Console. Watch for crawl errors and a spike in 404s for a fortnight.
- Cron. Scheduled jobs, backups and subscription renewals sometimes do not restart. Confirm they ran.
- Backups. Your old host's backups do not come with you. Set up new ones immediately, not eventually.
Or do not do it yourself
None of the above is difficult. It is just a sequence with real consequences for getting a step out of order, done under time pressure, on a site that pays your bills.
Up Speed migrates your site for free with any plan. Backups, files, database, testing and the cutover are handled, and you keep control of your own domain and hosting account throughout. Nothing gets locked to us.
After the move, the ongoing part is the point: core, theme and plugin updates tested before they go live, scheduled off-site backups with one-click restore, malware scanning, and 24/7 uptime monitoring on 60-second checks, all reported back to you in plain English once a month. If something breaks, we fix it rather than sending you an alert about it.
If you have been putting off a move because of the risk, the Starter plan includes the migration, and you can start with a free site audit first if you want to see what shape the site is in before it goes anywhere.