Most people migrate hosts because a renewal price arrived — usually three to eight times what they first paid, for reasons worth understanding. It is a good reason, and the move is more routine than it feels — but it goes wrong in the same three places every time: DNS, email, and cancelling the old account too early.
Here is a sequence that avoids all three. Budget a couple of hours of actual work spread over about a week, most of which is waiting.
Before you start: two things to check
Where is your email? If your email runs on your current host rather than on Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or Zoho, this is the highest-risk part of the whole exercise. Mail is far more painful to lose than a website. If you are on host email and moving to a host that does not offer it — Cloudways and Kinsta both exclude email — sort out email separately first, as its own project.
Where is your domain registered? Often the old host, especially if it came free. You do not have to move the registration to migrate hosting, and it is simpler if you don't do both at once. Just make sure you can log in and edit nameservers.
Step 1 — Lower your DNS TTL, then wait
Do this first, several days ahead. TTL is how long DNS resolvers cache your records. If it is set to 24 hours, some visitors will keep hitting your old server for a day after you switch.
Find your A record in your DNS panel and set the TTL to 300 seconds. Then wait for the old TTL to expire — if it was 24 hours, wait a day. This single step is what converts "a day of mixed traffic" into "a few minutes".
Step 2 — Set the new host up completely, on a temporary URL
Do not touch DNS yet. Get the site fully working on the new host while the old one still serves the public.
Most hosts give you a temporary domain or a preview URL. If yours does not, edit your local machine's hosts file to point your domain at the new server's IP — then your browser sees the new site while everyone else sees the old one. This is the single most useful trick in a migration.
Either use the host's free migration service, or move it yourself: copy the files,
export and import the database, update the database credentials in your configuration
file. For WordPress that is wp-config.php.
Step 3 — Test properly, on the new server
Not just the homepage. Work through:
- The homepage and three or four inner pages
- A post or product page with images — check the images actually load
- Any contact or signup form, submitted for real
- Checkout, if you have one, with a test payment
- The admin area, and one plugin update
- HTTPS — is the certificate issued and valid on the new host?
- Redirects and pretty permalinks
Fix everything here. Once DNS moves, you are debugging in public.
Step 4 — Sync the last of the data
If your site takes orders, comments or signups, anything that arrived since your export is still only on the old server. For a busy site, put it in maintenance mode for ten minutes, re-export the database, and import it again. For a quiet site, migrate at 3am and accept the small window.
Do not skip this on a shop. A lost order is a real customer.
Step 5 — Switch DNS
Now change the A record to the new server's IP, or the nameservers if the new host wants that. With a 300-second TTL, most visitors follow within minutes.
If you are switching nameservers rather than just the A record, copy every existing record first — MX for mail, TXT for SPF and DKIM, any CNAMEs for subdomains. Nameserver changes are where email quietly breaks: the new host's DNS has no MX records for your mail provider, so mail starts bouncing while the website looks perfect.
Step 6 — Leave the old host running
For at least two weeks. It costs one more month at most and it is your rollback plan. Keep the old files and database intact, and take a full download of both to your own machine before you cancel anything.
While you wait, watch for:
- 404s in the new host's logs — usually a missed redirect rule
- Mail arriving normally, both directions
- Search Console for crawl errors
- Mixed-content warnings if the old site had hard-coded http:// URLs
Step 7 — Cancel deliberately
Once two weeks have passed cleanly: download a final backup, confirm the domain is either transferred or safely pointing where you want, then cancel. If you paid for a term you have not used, ask about a pro-rata refund — some hosts give one, and almost none offer it unprompted.
Expect a retention offer when you cancel. If it is good, take it with your eyes open: it is usually a one-year discount, and you will be back here next year.
The three mistakes, restated
- Switching nameservers without copying MX and TXT records. Website fine, email broken, and you find out when a customer phones.
- Not lowering TTL first. Turns a five-minute switch into a day of some visitors seeing a stale site.
- Cancelling the old host immediately. Removes your only rollback to save a few dollars.
Get those three right and a migration is genuinely uneventful. Before you pick the destination, check which specs actually matter so you do not move for the wrong reason — then price the options over three years — the cost calculator will show you which hosts are cheap once the intro rate expires, which is a different list from the cheap-looking one.
Closing the old account
Once the new host is serving traffic, there is a right order for shutting the old one down — and a refund you may still be owed: how to cancel web hosting and get a refund. If the renewal price is what prompted the move in the first place, five ways to reduce it may save you the migration next time.