How to Move Your WordPress Site to a New Host Without Downtime
Outgrowing your hosting happens to every site eventually. Pages get slow, the renewal price jumps, support takes a day to answer — and suddenly switching hosts looks tempting. It also looks terrifying, because your site is your business, and breaking it for a day (or a week) is not an option.
Here’s the good news: moving a WordPress site between hosts is one of the most solved problems in the WordPress world. Thousands of people do it every day with free tools, and done right, your visitors never notice a thing. This guide walks you through the whole thing — picking the right method, doing the move, and the post-migration checks that catch the problems which only show up later.
Before you touch anything: back up
This is non-negotiable. Before any migration, make a complete backup of your site — files *and* database — and store it somewhere other than your current host. If the migration goes sideways, a backup is the difference between a 10-minute rollback and a very bad day.
If you don’t have a backup system yet, install UpdraftPlus (free) and run a full backup to Google Drive or Dropbox. Our WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist covers backup habits in more detail.
The zero-downtime strategy
A migration has three moving parts: your files, your database, and your domain’s DNS records pointing at the new server. Downtime happens when DNS points visitors at the new server before the site is ready there, or keeps pointing at the old one after you’ve shut it down.
The fix is to overlap, not hand off:
- Lower your DNS TTL to 300 seconds, 24 hours before the move. TTL (time to live) is how long the internet caches your DNS records. Your domain registrar or Cloudflare panel lets you change it. A short TTL means that when you do switch DNS, the change spreads in minutes instead of hours.
- Build the complete, tested site on the new host first — using a temporary URL or staging address your host provides.
- Only then point your DNS at the new server.
- Leave the old site running for 48 hours after the switch, in case stragglers with cached DNS land there.
Because the old site stays live until the last moment, visitors never hit a broken page.
Pick your migration method
There are three ways to do this, ranked from easiest to hardest.
Option 1: Let your new host do it (free, and often the best choice)
Most decent hosts offer free migrations for new customers — either done by their support team or through a free migration plugin. This is the lazy and often correct option.
- SiteGround offers a free SiteGround Migrator plugin that moves your site with a few clicks — it’s built specifically for moving *to* SiteGround.
- Bluehost offers free site migration for new hosting customers (check their current terms when you sign up).
- Cloudways offers one free migration per plan via their support team.
If your new host does free migrations, take it. They handle thousands of moves a year, and it’s their problem if something breaks.
Option 2: A migration plugin (best for DIY)
If you’re moving yourself, a plugin is the way. Two free options cover almost every case:
Migrate Guru — my recommendation for most beginners. It’s free with no site-size cap (handles sites up to 200GB), does the whole move in one click, and the heavy lifting happens on BlogVault’s servers rather than yours, so your own server’s limits rarely get in the way. You install it on your site, enter the destination’s FTP/SSH credentials, and it migrates everything — files, database, plugins — then rewrites the URLs automatically.
All-in-One WP Migration — the simplest interface of the bunch: export to a file, download it, drag and drop it into the import screen on the new host. One important nuance most comparison articles get wrong: the free version has *no hard-coded import limit*. The size cap you see on the import screen comes from your host’s PHP upload settings, not the plugin. If your export file is bigger than what your host allows you to upload, the paid Unlimited Extension ($69/year) removes that ceiling.
Duplicator — powerful but slightly more technical, since you download a package plus an installer file and run the installer on the new server yourself. Note that the free version caps the archive at 500MB; bigger sites need Duplicator Pro.
Honest take: for a first migration, use Migrate Guru if you want it truly one-click, or All-in-One WP Migration if you prefer seeing the whole process as a file you control. Avoid migrating by manually exporting/importing the database in phpMyAdmin unless you’re comfortable fixing serialized data — one wrong search-replace corrupts every widget and theme setting.
Option 3: Manual migration (FTP + phpMyAdmin)
Manual is worth knowing about because it’s how you rescue a site when plugins fail. In short: download everything from the old host via FTP/SFTP, export the database from phpMyAdmin, upload both to the new host, create a new database, import the SQL file, update `wp-config.php` with the new database credentials, and run a proper search-replace on the URLs. It’s doable in about an hour if you know your way around, but it’s the option with the most ways to fail — skip it unless you enjoy that sort of thing.
Step by step: migrating with Migrate Guru
Here’s the full process with Migrate Guru, which is the path I’d suggest to a beginner:
- Back up your site (see above — really).
- Lower your DNS TTL to 300 seconds at least 24 hours ahead.
- Set up hosting at the new provider and note the FTP/SSH credentials and the temporary URL or staging address they give you.
- Install Migrate Guru on your *old* site (Plugins > Add New, search “Migrate Guru”).
- Start a migration inside the plugin: enter your email, pick your destination host from the list (or enter FTP details manually), and give it the destination server’s credentials. Migrate Guru does a pre-flight check and warns you about common blockers before it starts.
- Let it run. Small sites finish in minutes; large ones can take an hour or more. You can close the tab — the migration happens on BlogVault’s servers and continues without you.
- Test everything on the temporary URL before touching DNS. Click through your key pages, submit your contact form, check the media library loads, log into wp-admin. Do this seriously — this is your one chance to catch problems while the old site is still live for everyone.
- Switch your DNS to point your domain at the new host’s nameservers or IP.
- Wait out the propagation. With the lowered TTL this takes minutes to a few hours, not a day. Don’t panic if you see the new site immediately but a friend elsewhere sees the old one — that’s normal.
- Keep the old site live for 48 hours, then cancel it. Set the DNS TTL back to a normal value (3600 or higher).
The post-migration checklist (don’t skip this)
Migrations look finished before they are. Run through these within a day of the switch:
- Save your permalinks. Go to Settings > Permalinks and click Save Changes without changing anything. Migration regularly breaks the rewrite rules, and this regenerates them. If your inner pages 404 after a move, this is almost always the fix.
- Check SSL. Make sure your site loads over HTTPS with no mixed-content warnings. Most hosts issue a free Let’s Encrypt certificate automatically, but it can take an hour to provision after DNS switches. Test with your browser’s padlock icon.
- Verify your forms and checkouts. Contact forms, newsletter signups, and checkout pages often carry hardcoded URLs or API credentials tied to the old environment. Submit a real test entry.
- Confirm images load from the new domain. Broken images after migration usually mean some URLs still point at the old host. Search your site for the old domain or staging URL.
- Reconnect analytics and Search Console. Your GA4 tag travels with the site (it’s in your theme or plugin), but verify it’s still collecting. No change-of-address is needed in Search Console since the domain didn’t change — only the server did.
- Flush every cache. Clear your caching plugin, your CDN (Cloudflare “Purge Everything”), and your browser cache. Stale cache after a migration is the number-one cause of “it works for me but not for you.”
- Check email deliverability. If your site sends order confirmations or form notifications, make sure SPF/DKIM records carried over (or were re-added) at your DNS. Forms that silently stop sending email are a classic post-migration surprise.
- Compare speed before and after. Run PageSpeed Insights on a few key pages and save the results. One of the best parts of moving hosts is supposed to be better performance — our speed guide shows how to squeeze the most out of the new server.
- Update your PHP version. A new host is a clean slate — set PHP to 8.3 or higher (WordPress’s current recommendation) in the hosting panel instead of inheriting an old version.
When to ask for help
Two situations warrant calling in support instead of pushing through alone: if your site uses a custom setup your migration plugin can’t see (multisite networks, sites split across multiple databases, or heavy server-level caching like Varnish with custom rules), and if email is business-critical and you can’t afford even a short DNS hiccup. A host’s free migration team or a freelancer who does migrations weekly will cost far less than a day of downtime.
FAQ
How long does a WordPress migration take?
The file copy takes anywhere from 20 minutes to a few hours depending on site size. Plan on one focused afternoon including testing. DNS propagation adds a few hours of uncertainty, but with a lowered TTL your visitors won’t notice.
Will my SEO rankings drop after moving hosts?
Moving servers doesn’t change your domain, URLs, or content, so rankings are generally unaffected. Rankings *can* wobble briefly if the site is unreachable during the switch — which is exactly what the zero-downtime approach above prevents. A faster new host often *helps* rankings over time through better Core Web Vitals.
Do I need to notify Google about a host change?
No. Google’s change-of-address tool is for domain changes, not server changes. Googlebot will simply find your content on the new IP. Nothing to file.
Can I migrate a site to a different domain at the same time?
Yes, but don’t. Change one thing at a time: migrate first, verify everything works, then handle the domain change separately. Combining them makes every problem twice as hard to diagnose.
What’s the cheapest way to migrate?
The migration itself is free with Migrate Guru or All-in-One WP Migration. Your only real cost is the new hosting plan. If price is the driver, compare plans in our best WordPress hosting for beginners guide — and watch out for hosts whose cheap first year triples at renewal.
