How to Move a WordPress Site to a New Host Without Downtime

To move a WordPress site to a new host, you copy its files and database to the new server, test the copy before anyone sees it, and only then switch your domain’s DNS. Done in that order, visitors never see a broken site and your rankings stay where they are.

This guide is for business owners and marketing managers changing hosts because the current one is slow, expensive or unreliable. You’ll learn the three ways to do the move, which one fits your site, the exact order of steps, and the checks that catch problems before your customers do.

What moving a WordPress site to a new host involves

Every WordPress site is made of two parts, and both have to move together.

• The files: WordPress itself, your theme, your plugins and the wp-content/uploads folder that holds every image and PDF you’ve added. Uploads are usually the largest part.
• The database: your pages, posts, settings, users, form entries and, on a WooCommerce site, every product, customer and order.

Around those two parts sit the things people forget: your domain’s DNS records, your email, your SSL certificate, scheduled tasks and any server settings your old host configured for you.

The good news is that a host change is the simplest kind of move. Your domain stays the same, so every URL stays the same, and nothing needs redirecting. Google’s own guide on changing hosting without URL changes says to expect a short dip in how often Googlebot crawls the site after the switch, then a recovery over several days. It doesn’t treat it as a site move. If you’re also changing your domain or rebuilding the site on another platform, that’s a migration with redirects, and it needs a different plan. Our WordPress migration service covers both, with hosting moves at $149 and platform moves from $890.

Three ways to move a WordPress site, compared

There is no single right method. The right one depends on your site’s size, how much it changes each hour, and how comfortable you are with a hosting control panel.

Method	Best for	Typical cost	Main risk
New host’s free migration	Brochure sites and blogs on a standard setup	Free with many hosts	You don’t control the timing or the checks, and support may stop at “the files are copied”
Migration plugin (for example Duplicator, All-in-One WP Migration, UpdraftPlus)	Small to medium sites under a few GB, with dashboard access	Free, or a paid plugin licence for larger sites	Fails on large uploads folders or strict server limits, often halfway through
Manual move (files by SFTP, database export and import)	Large sites, stores, custom code, or when plugins fail	Your time, or a developer’s	Easy to miss a step without a checklist
Hand it to a developer or agency	Stores, busy sites, anything that earns money every hour	Our hosting moves are $149	Choosing someone who doesn’t test before switching

For a five-page business site with a contact form, the new host’s free migration or a plugin is usually enough, and we’d tell you so. The calculation changes when the site takes orders or bookings. Every hour of a half-moved store is an hour of lost or duplicated orders.

Before the move: six things to prepare

Most failed moves were decided before any file was copied. Spend an hour on these first.

1. Take a full backup you can restore without the old host. Download a copy of the files and the database to your own computer or cloud storage. A backup that lives only on the server you’re leaving isn’t a backup.
2. Find out where your email lives. If your addresses run on the old host (common with cPanel hosting), cancelling that account or moving your nameservers can stop email. If you use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, write down the MX and TXT records so you can copy them exactly.
3. Record your DNS records. Log in where your domain’s DNS is managed and save a screenshot or export of every record: A, CNAME, MX, TXT (including SPF, DKIM and DMARC) and any verification records for Google, Microsoft or Meta.
4. Lower the DNS TTL. TTL (time to live) controls how long internet providers cache your DNS answer. Google recommends lowering it at least a week before the switch, so the change spreads in minutes rather than hours. Five minutes (300 seconds) is a common choice.
5. Match the server setup. Check the PHP version, PHP memory limit and database version on the old host, then set the new host to match or newer. WordPress currently recommends PHP 8.3 or greater and MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.11 or greater. If your old host runs PHP 7.4, update and test your plugins before the move, not during it.
6. Pick a quiet window. Look at your analytics for the hour of the week with the fewest visitors and orders. For many US businesses that’s late evening or early Sunday, US time.

From our projects: Every hosting move we do includes checks on files, the database and email, an SSL setup on the new server, and testing after the move, before the old host is touched. The email check is there because it’s the part of a host change that site owners notice last, usually when a customer says their message bounced.

How to move a WordPress site to a new host, step by step

This is the order we follow. It works whether you use a plugin or move things by hand; only steps 2 and 3 change.

1. Freeze changes on the live site. Ask your team not to publish or edit for the move window. On a store, plan the cutover for a quiet hour, or briefly turn on a maintenance message during the final copy.
2. Copy the files to the new server. With a plugin, create the package and restore it on the new host. By hand, download the whole WordPress folder by SFTP or the host’s file manager and upload it to the new account.
3. Move the database. Export it from the old host (phpMyAdmin or the host’s backup tool), create a new empty database and user on the new host, and import the file. Large databases may need the host’s import tool or command line instead of phpMyAdmin.
4. Update wp-config.php. If the database name, username, password or host changed, enter the new details in wp-config.php. The official Migrating WordPress guide notes this is the only change needed when the domain stays the same.
5. Test the copy privately. Use the new host’s temporary URL or preview feature, or edit the hosts file on your computer so only you see the new server under your real domain. Click through the homepage, key service pages, the blog, forms, checkout and the dashboard.
6. Install SSL on the new server. Most hosts issue a free certificate once the domain points to them; some can issue it in advance. Plan for a few minutes without a valid certificate if yours can’t.
7. Switch DNS. Change the A record (or nameservers) to the new host. Leave MX and email records exactly as they were unless your email is moving too.
8. Do the final sync. If anything changed on the old site during testing, such as new orders, form entries or comments, export and import those changes, or repeat the database copy just before switching.
9. Check from outside your network. Use a public DNS checker to confirm the new IP address is showing in different regions, then test the live site on mobile data rather than your office Wi-Fi.

One warning if the domain changes during the move, for example from a temporary URL: never run a plain find-and-replace on the database. WordPress stores some settings as serialized data with character counts, and a raw replace can break widgets and theme settings. Use a tool built for it, such as WP-CLI’s search-replace command.

Steps checked against Google Search Central’s guide to changing hosting without URL changes (updated December 2025) and the WordPress Advanced Administration Handbook’s Migrating WordPress page (updated October 2026), as of October 29, 2026.

What a one-week hosting move looks like in practice

Here’s a realistic plan for a 25-page business site with a blog, a contact form and email on the old host. The work itself takes a few hours. The calendar time is mostly waiting for DNS caches to expire and confirming that nothing is still hitting the old server.

When	Task	Time needed
Day -7	Lower DNS TTL to 300 seconds; record all DNS records; decide where email will live	30 minutes
Day -2	Full backup downloaded; new hosting account set up with matching PHP version	1 hour
Day -1	Files and database copied; site tested through a hosts-file preview	2–3 hours
Day 0, quiet hour	Final database sync; DNS switched; SSL issued; live checks	1 hour
Days 1–7	Watch forms, email, uptime and Search Console; old host stays active	15 minutes a day
Day 8 or later	Old host cancelled once its traffic has dropped to zero	15 minutes

That last row matters. Google’s guidance is to shut the old hosting down only when traffic to it has dropped to zero. Some visitors and bots keep old DNS answers for longer than the TTL suggests, and the old server is also your fastest rollback if something goes wrong.

After the move: checks that protect rankings and leads

A site that loads isn’t the same as a site that works. Run these checks on the day of the switch and again two or three days later.

• Forms and email: submit every form and confirm the notification arrives. Many hosts block or throttle PHP mail, so set up an SMTP service if notifications stop.
• Search Console: confirm your verification still works, then use URL Inspection on a few key pages to check Googlebot can reach them. Check the firewall or bot protection on the new host isn’t blocking Google.
• No leftover blocks: make sure Settings > Reading doesn’t have “Discourage search engines” ticked, and that robots.txt is the same as before. Staging copies often carry a noindex setting.
• Speed: compare load times with the old host. If the site is slower, turn on the new host’s caching, and check our guide to why a WordPress site is slow before blaming the hosting.
• Scheduled tasks: backups, scheduled posts and WooCommerce emails rely on WP-Cron or a server cron job. Confirm they run on the new server.
• Mixed content and SSL: look for padlock warnings, which usually mean an image or script still loads over plain HTTP.
• Backups: set up backups on the new host straight away. Your old host’s backups end when you cancel it.

If the site shows a critical error or a blank page right after the move, the usual cause is a PHP version difference or a plugin that doesn’t like the new server. Our guide to fixing the WordPress critical error walks through it.

Common mistakes that cause downtime or lost data

• Switching DNS before testing. The first person to find a broken checkout should be you, not a customer.
• Moving nameservers without copying DNS records. If you point your domain’s nameservers at the new host, every record must be recreated there, including email and verification records. Changing only the A record is safer when you don’t need to move DNS.
• Losing orders made during the move. Orders, bookings and form entries placed on the old server after your copy won’t exist on the new one unless you sync them.
• Cancelling the old host the same day. You lose your rollback, any backups stored there and, if email ran there, your mailboxes.
• Copying an infection. If the old site was hacked, moving it moves the malware too. Clean it first; a new host doesn’t fix a compromised site.
• Leaving search engines blocked. A noindex setting carried over from a test copy can quietly remove pages from Google over the following weeks.

When to move the site yourself and when to hire help

Do it yourself if the site is small, has no store or bookings, uses mainstream plugins, and you’re comfortable logging into a hosting control panel. Try the new host’s free migration first; many will do it for a standard WordPress site at no charge.

Hire help if any of these are true: the site takes payments or bookings, the uploads folder runs to several gigabytes, the site has custom code or a heavily customized theme, email runs on the old host, a plugin migration has already failed, or you simply can’t afford a bad day. A hosting or domain move with us costs $149, covers files, database and email checks, SSL setup and post-move testing, and usually takes 1 to 3 days. Full prices for every type of move are on our pricing page.

If you’re changing more than the host, say rebuilding a Wix site in WordPress or redesigning at the same time, plan it as a migration with a URL map and redirects. Our redesign SEO checklist covers that side, and our Wix to WordPress project for an Irish catering business shows what a platform move involves: about two to three weeks, compared with days for a host change.

Once you’re on the new host, the work isn’t over. Updates, backups and security checks need to happen every month. Our WordPress care plans start at $49 a month and cover updates, daily backups, uptime monitoring and security scans.

Get your WordPress site moved safely

Attors Technologies is a web development agency that builds, moves and maintains WordPress sites for businesses in the US, UK and Europe. If you’d rather not risk your leads or orders on a host change, tell us where your site is now and where it’s going. We’ll confirm the price before any work starts, test the new copy before switching, and leave your old host running until everything checks out.

Get a fixed quote for your WordPress host move