Website Migration Guide 2026 — How to Move Your Site Without Downtime

Best host to migrate to: Hostinger — free migration included

🚀 Migrate to Hostinger — Free Migration Service Included

Our team migrates your website for free — zero downtime, zero data loss, done in 24 hours

Your site is slow — consistently over 2 seconds

If GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed reports load times over 2 seconds and you’ve already optimised images and plugins, your hosting is the bottleneck. Migrating to a LiteSpeed host like Hostinger can cut load times to under 0.8 seconds without any other changes.

Frequent downtime — multiple outages per month

If UptimeRobot shows your site going down more than a few hours per month, your host is failing to deliver even the 99.9% uptime they promise. Downtime directly costs you traffic, rankings, and revenue.

Renewal price shock — your bill is doubling

If your introductory period is ending and the renewal price feels unjustifiable — switching hosts resets you to a new provider’s promotional pricing. This is a legitimate and common strategy to keep costs low.

Poor support — hours waiting for help

If your current host takes 24+ hours to respond to tickets or doesn’t offer live chat, migrating to a host with 24/7 live chat (Hostinger responds in under 2 minutes) is a quality-of-life upgrade that will save you hours of frustration.

You’ve outgrown shared hosting

If your site consistently gets 30,000+ monthly visitors and shared hosting can’t keep up with traffic spikes, it’s time to migrate to a VPS. Contabo VPS at $5.99/month gives you 8 GB dedicated RAM that shared hosting simply can’t match.

When NOT to migrate

Don’t migrate if: your site performs well, your renewal price is reasonable, and you’re happy with support. Migration always carries a small risk and requires effort — only do it when there’s a clear benefit to justify the work.

🥇 BEST HOST TO MIGRATE TO

Hostinger — Free Migration + Fastest Speed

$3.99/mo

🖥️ MIGRATE TO VPS

Contabo VPS — When You’re Ready for More Power

$5.99/mo

🏆 WORDPRESS.ORG RECOMMENDED

Bluehost — Migrate to Official WordPress Host

$2.95/mo

1

Install Duplicator on your old site

WordPress Admin → Plugins → Add New → search “Duplicator” → Install & Activate. Duplicator creates a complete snapshot of your entire WordPress site — files and database — in a single ZIP archive.

2

Create a new package

Duplicator → Packages → Create New → Next → Build. Wait for the build to complete (2–10 minutes depending on site size). Download both the Installer file (installer.php) and the Archive file (your-site_date_archive.zip) to your computer.

3

Set up your new hosting account

Sign up for Hostinger (or your chosen new host). In hPanel, add your domain to the hosting account. Create a new MySQL database and user via hPanel → Databases → MySQL Databases. Note the database name, username, and password — you’ll need these in step 5.

4

Upload both Duplicator files to new host

Using hPanel’s File Manager or FTP, upload both files (installer.php and the archive ZIP) to the public_html folder of your new hosting account. Make sure public_html is empty first — no default files.

5

Run the installer

Navigate to http://yournewsite.com/installer.php in your browser. The Duplicator installer wizard guides you through entering your new database credentials. Click through the steps — it extracts all files and imports your database automatically.

6

Test your site before switching DNS

Before switching DNS, verify your new site works by editing your computer’s hosts file to point your domain to the new server IP temporarily. Check all pages, forms, and WooCommerce checkout work correctly. Only switch DNS once everything is confirmed working.

mysqldump -u username -p database_name > backup.sql

Host: ftp.youroldhost.com | User: your_cpanel_user | Port: 21

mysql -u username -p new_database_name < backup.sql

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘new_database_name’);
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘new_db_username’);
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘new_db_password’);
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

How long does DNS propagation take?

Typically 15 minutes to 48 hours. If you lowered your TTL to 300 seconds 24 hours before switching (as recommended in the pre-migration checklist), most locations will update within 15–30 minutes. Without the TTL reduction, it can take up to 48 hours.

How to switch DNS — two methods

Method A (Nameserver change): Go to your domain registrar → DNS Settings → Update nameservers to your new host’s nameservers (e.g., Hostinger: ns1.dns-parking.com, ns2.dns-parking.com). Simplest method — moves all DNS control to the new host.

Method B (A record change): Keep your current nameservers and only update the A record to point to your new server’s IP address. More granular control — useful if you have other services (email, subdomains) staying on the old host.

How to check DNS propagation progress

Visit whatsmydns.net and enter your domain. It shows whether the domain points to your old or new IP address from locations around the world. Once all green checkmarks appear, propagation is complete globally.

Zero-downtime strategy — run both sites in parallel

Keep your old hosting account active and running until DNS has fully propagated everywhere. During propagation, some visitors will see the old site and some will see the new one — both should be identical. Only cancel your old hosting 48 hours after switching DNS when you’re confident propagation is complete.

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

The actual file transfer and setup takes 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on your site size and method. DNS propagation takes an additional 15 minutes to 48 hours. A small WordPress blog using Duplicator can be migrated in under an hour. A large WooCommerce store with 10,000 products may take a full day. Hostinger’s free migration service completes in 24 hours with zero effort from you.

If done correctly — no, or even improved. Your URLs stay the same, your content stays the same, and Google only sees a faster loading site. However, there may be a brief period of 1–3 days where rankings fluctuate slightly as Google recrawls your site from the new server. If you migrate to a faster host (like from Apache to LiteSpeed), Core Web Vitals improve and rankings typically increase within 2–4 weeks.

Yes — multiple ways. Hostinger includes a free migration service where their team handles everything for you. Alternatively, use the free Duplicator WordPress plugin to do it yourself at no cost. The only cost is the new hosting account itself, which starts from $1.99/month on Hostinger.

The three pillars of a safe migration: (1) Complete backup stored in two locations before starting. (2) Keep old hosting active until the new site is confirmed working. (3) Test new site thoroughly before switching DNS. Following these three rules eliminates virtually all data loss risk.

Email migration requires additional steps beyond website migration. Export all emails from your old host via IMAP (use Thunderbird or the Email Migration tool in your new host’s cPanel). Recreate email accounts on the new host with the same addresses. Update your MX records after the new accounts are ready. Alternatively, use a separate email service like Google Workspace or Zoho Mail that’s independent of your hosting — this eliminates the email migration problem entirely.

If your domain stays the same — no action is required. Google will automatically detect the new server when it next crawls your site. To speed this up, use Google Search Console → URL Inspection → Request Indexing for your homepage after migration. Google typically recrawls major sites within 1–7 days. If you’re also changing your domain (not recommended), then a Change of Address notification in Search Console is required.