Moving Your Website to a New Host: A Checklist Without Downtime
Slow site, rising renewal prices, or support that never answers? Moving to a new host is less scary than it sounds if you do it in the right order. Follow this checklist and your visitors won’t notice a thing.
Before you start
- Don’t cancel your old hosting yet. Keep it running until the move is finished and checked.
- Find your domain login. You’ll need to change where your domain points. Check who your domain is registered with.
- List your email accounts, including forwards and aliases.
- Take a full backup of files, databases and email.
Step 1: Set up the new hosting
Choose your plan and add your domain to the new account. Create the same email accounts you had before.
Step 2: Copy the website
Copy the files and import the database. For WordPress, a migration plugin or your new host’s migration tool makes this much easier.
Step 3: Test before switching
Preview the site on the new server before changing anything for visitors. Check pages, forms, the shop checkout and the admin login.
Step 4: Lower the DNS TTL
A day before the switch, lower the TTL on your DNS records, for example to five minutes. That makes the final change take effect much faster.
Step 5: Switch the domain
At a quiet time, change your nameservers or DNS records to the new host. Visitors move over gradually as the change spreads.
Step 6: Check email
Send and receive a test email on every mailbox. Make sure SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are set up on the new host so your emails don’t land in spam.
Step 7: Switch on SSL and check again
Install the free SSL certificate on the new host, then check the site in a private browser window and on your phone.
Step 8: Cancel the old hosting
Wait a week, make sure nothing is still arriving at the old server, then cancel.
Prefer someone else to do it?
Our website migration service handles all of these steps for you, from €29–€59.