How to Migrate WordPress to a New Host Without Losing Rankings or Data

There are plenty of reasons to move a WordPress site to a new host. Maybe your current provider is slow, unreliable or charging more than the service is worth. Perhaps you’ve outgrown shared hosting and need something with better performance. Whatever the reason, migrating WordPress to a new host doesn’t have to be a stressful experience. With the right preparation and a clear process, you can move everything across without losing data, breaking functionality or damaging your search rankings. If you’d rather hand the whole thing off to specialists, WordPress support services for UK businesses take the risk out of the process entirely.

Skip the planning stage and your migration turns into a disaster. Extended downtime hits, pages break, email accounts disappear and your organic visibility vanishes for months. Most botched migrations happen because people jump straight into copying files without thinking it through.

For a wider view of what to look for when picking a new host, see the WordPress hosting UK options breakdown.

Planning Your Migration Before You Touch Anything

Document everything about your current setup before you touch either server. WordPress version, PHP version, database size, active plugins and themes, plus any custom server configurations your site depends on. Your current host might use cPanel while the new one runs Plesk and these differences cause compatibility headaches if you’re not ready. Check what control panel each host provides and note down the WordPress version requirements.

Timing matters here. Never migrate during peak traffic or product launches and choose quiet hours when fewer people visit your site. Warn colleagues, clients and email users about potential disruption. Set your DNS TTL to 300 seconds at least 48 hours beforehand so changes propagate quickly when you switch over. The official WordPress migration documentation covers the technical details you’ll need.

Full backups come first. Your entire public_html or www directory, the complete database and all email accounts on the server. Store these backups somewhere independent of both hosts because when things break, you need clean copies to restore from fast.

The Manual Migration Process Step by Step

You’ll see exactly what happens at each stage when you migrate manually. Nothing gets hidden behind automated processes that might fail without warning, which puts you in complete control.

1. Export your WordPress database from the old host using phpMyAdmin or a command-line tool like mysqldump. Save the .sql file somewhere safe.
2. Download all WordPress files from the old server via SFTP or your hosting file manager. That includes the wp-content folder (themes, plugins, uploads), wp-config.php and any custom files in the root directory.
3. Create a new database on the new host and import your .sql file into it. Note down the new database name, username and password.
4. Upload all WordPress files to the new server, placing them in the correct document root directory.
5. Edit wp-config.php to reflect the new database credentials (DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD and DB_HOST).
6. Test the site on the new server using a temporary URL, the server’s IP address or by modifying your local hosts file to point the domain at the new server.
7. Update your domain’s DNS A record (and AAAA record if using IPv6) to point to the new server’s IP address.
8. Wait for DNS propagation to complete, then test everything thoroughly on the live domain.
9. Install or verify your SSL certificate on the new host and force HTTPS across the site.
10. Decommission the old hosting account once you’ve confirmed everything is working correctly.

Database imports blow up when MySQL versions don’t match or character encoding goes wrong. File permissions need tweaking after upload more often than you’d think and wp-config.php updates are surprisingly easy to mess up with a missed field or stray typo. Check each step twice before moving forward because these common traps catch people out constantly.

Using Migration Plugins

All-in-One WP Migration, Duplicator and UpdraftPlus can handle most of the heavy lifting if you’d rather avoid the manual route. They package everything up, export your database and restore it on the new server through interfaces that make sense. Works great for standard sites that aren’t massive and when both servers run similar setups.

Free plugin versions cap file sizes hard though. Large media libraries will hit that wall fast unless you pay for the full version and some hosts disable the PHP functions these tools need. Multisite networks or custom setups often break them completely. Sites making money or handling customer data should probably get professional help and most teams offering managed WordPress hosting throw migration into their onboarding anyway.

Everything needs testing on the new server before you go anywhere near DNS settings. Skip this and you’re creating unnecessary pressure when you’re trying to fix a broken site whilst visitors are staring at error pages.

DNS Propagation, TTL and the Waiting Game

Once you’ve updated those DNS records, propagation takes its sweet time. Visitors get split between your old server and the new one, which creates this weird mixed state that can drag on for minutes or stretch to 48 hours depending on TTL values and how each ISP handles their caches.

Set your TTL to 300 seconds well before migration starts and you’ll dodge hours of waiting around. DNS servers cache records based on TTL settings, which means if yours was sitting at 86400 seconds they’ll keep pointing to the old server for up to 24 hours after you make changes. But drop it to 300 seconds and caches expire every five minutes, so propagation happens much faster. You can monitor this whole process with tools like whatsmydns.net that check DNS servers across different locations.

Keep both hosting accounts running for at least 72 hours after updating DNS. Don’t cancel the old one the second you flip the switch because you need to verify traffic flows properly to the new server and confirm email and forms still function before shutting anything down.

SSL Certificates and HTTPS

Your SSL certificate stays put when you move hosts. It’s tied to the original server, so you’ll need to grab a new one or export your existing certificate files and private key to bring them along. Most decent hosts throw in free Let’s Encrypt SSL these days and you can get it sorted with a couple of clicks once your domain’s pointing at the new server.

People see those scary browser warnings about insecure connections if there’s any delay between DNS switching over and your SSL getting installed. Visitors don’t hang about when they see security warnings. Have your SSL certificate ready to go live the second DNS points to your new server and some hosts will let you set up SSL beforehand using DNS validation instead of HTTP validation.

WordPress loves storing absolute URLs in the database, which creates problems if your old site mixed HTTP and HTTPS or ran without SSL entirely. You’ll probably need to run a search and replace across your entire database to update every reference. Check that all your internal links use HTTPS after installing the certificate. Mixed content warnings pop up when your page loads over HTTPS but pulls in assets from HTTP URLs and sorting these out is one of those tedious jobs that always takes longer than expected.

Protecting Your SEO During and After Migration

Search rankings should survive a hosting move without any drama. Downtime’s what kills you though.

Your URL structure changes and suddenly every single link needs sorting. 301 redirects aren’t optional here, they’re what keeps your site rankings alive when you’re switching from subdirectories to root domains or finally making that jump to HTTPS. Search engines see these redirects and transfer most of your ranking juice to the new spots, which is exactly what you want. Skip them though and you’ll watch years of link building vanish while visitors get dumped on error pages. SEO migration planning needs to happen before any hosting move touches your URLs.

Once your migration’s done, get into Google Search Console and verify everything’s working. Upload that fresh sitemap and check the Coverage report for any crawl problems that might’ve popped up. Rankings usually take a small hit right after you move but they recover fast if you didn’t break anything major.

When to Bring In a Professional

Moving a simple blog between basic hosting providers when you’re comfortable with phpMyAdmin and SFTP? Go for it using the process we’ve covered. But high-traffic sites generating actual revenue, complex server configurations, busy WooCommerce stores or multisite installations are completely different beasts. One mistake during these migrations can cost you serious money, so bringing in someone who’s done this hundreds of times makes financial sense.

Real migration specialists don’t just copy files and cross their fingers. They’ll check what you’re working with, schedule around when your business is quiet and verify everything works perfectly before making the switch live. And your online shop built on WooCommerce can’t afford any downtime since customer orders, payment gateways and inventory data need to stay intact throughout the whole process.

Messages start bouncing and suddenly you realise email was never part of the plan. People get caught out switching from cPanel to managed WordPress because email hosting disappears completely. Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 need setting up first or you’d better confirm your new host handles email accounts.

After the Migration: Verify Everything

DNS changes spread slowly but testing starts the moment they’re live. Every page needs clicking, contact forms need submitting and you’ll want to complete a full checkout to check third-party integrations haven’t broken. Private browsing shows you what real visitors see once you’ve cleared the cache.

Run Screaming Frog across everything to catch broken links and missing images that slipped through. The Ahrefs guide to site migrations explains post-launch checks properly, so compare against your pre-migration crawl and monitor server logs for a week. When visitors don’t notice anything changed and search rankings hold steady, you’ve nailed it.