SiteSmith

Moving your website to new hosting without downtime

SiteSmith · · 5 min read

The secret to moving a website without downtime is the order. Set up and test the site at the new host while the old one keeps running, deal with email separately, switch your domain over at a quiet moment, and cancel the old host only after a week or two of everything working. Downtime almost always comes from doing one of those steps out of order, usually cancelling the old hosting first.

Before you begin: know what you are moving

Make a short inventory. It saves the most common surprises.

Logins you will need:

  • The registrar, where your domain is registered
  • Wherever your DNS is managed, which may be the registrar, the old host, or another company
  • The old hosting account
  • The new hosting account
  • Your email provider, if it is separate

What lives at the old host:

  • The website itself, its files and, for WordPress and similar, a database
  • Email mailboxes, if your email is part of the hosting plan
  • Other sites or subdomains, such as a booking page on "book.yourbusiness.com" or an old shop
  • Forms that send email through the host
  • Your DNS records, if the domain uses the host's nameservers

Look up your domain on ICANN's lookup tool and note the nameservers. If they belong to the old host, your DNS is there, and it needs a new home too.

Step 1: Set up the new host and copy the site

How you copy depends on what the site is built with:

  • WordPress: use a migration plugin, or the new host's free migration service if they have one. Many hosts will move a WordPress site for you.
  • Plain web pages: download the files from the old host and upload them to the new one.
  • A website builder (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy's builder): these sites cannot be copied to a regular host. Moving means rebuilding the pages on the new platform.

At this point the domain still points at the old host. Customers see nothing different.

Step 2: Test the copy before anyone sees it

Most hosts give you a temporary address to preview the site, or a way to view it before the domain points there. Go through it carefully:

  • Open every page from the menu and footer.
  • Check it on your phone as well as a computer.
  • Submit each form and confirm the message arrives.
  • Tap the phone number and the email links.
  • Check that photos, maps and embedded videos load.
  • If you have bookings, payments or a shop, test one end to end.

Fix problems now, while the old site is still serving customers.

Step 3: Sort out email separately

If your email is on the old hosting plan, it will stop when that plan is cancelled. Decide what happens to it before you move anything:

  • Move mailboxes to the new host, if it offers email, by creating the same addresses there and copying old messages across.
  • Or move email to a dedicated provider such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Many owners use a hosting move as the moment to do this.
  • Or leave email exactly where it is, if it is already with a separate provider. Then make sure the move does not touch its DNS records.

Whatever you choose, the switch for email is changing the MX records. Keeping your email working during a website change explains what to check, and moving your business email to a new provider covers the mailbox move itself.

Step 4: Prepare the switch a day ahead

  1. Screenshot all your DNS records where they are managed today.
  2. If your DNS lives at the old host, set up the same records with a new DNS provider, or at your registrar, and check them line by line. You will switch the nameservers in step 5.
  3. Lower the TTL on the website records to five or ten minutes, so the change spreads quickly. How long a domain change takes explains why this helps.
  4. Freeze changes on the old site. No new blog posts or page edits from now until the move is done, or they will be lost.
  5. Take a full backup of the old site and download it.

Step 5: Switch, at a quiet moment

Choose a weekday morning, not Friday evening. Then:

  • Change the website records (the A record for the bare domain and the www record) to the new host's values. Or, if you are moving DNS as well, change the nameservers at your registrar to the new DNS provider.
  • Leave email records alone unless email is moving today too.
  • Make sure the new host has your domain added on its side, so it knows to answer for it.

The old host keeps serving the site to anyone whose phone still remembers the old address, which is exactly why you have not cancelled it.

Step 6: Check everything

Within the first hour, and again the next day:

  • Open the site on your phone with Wi-Fi off, both with and without "www".
  • Check the padlock in the address bar. The new host usually creates the security certificate once the domain points there.
  • Submit the contact form.
  • Send an email to your business address and reply to it.
  • Open a few of your old page addresses, especially ones customers or Google send people to. They should still open the right pages. Why forwarding old page addresses matters explains what to do if the new site's addresses differ.

Step 7: Wait, then cancel the old host

Keep the old hosting for at least a week or two after the switch. During that time:

  • Check the old mailbox, if email moved, for messages that arrived late.
  • Download a final copy of the old site and any old emails you want to keep.
  • Confirm nothing else, such as a subdomain or a forgotten form, still depends on the old host.

Then cancel it, turn off auto-renew, and set the TTL on your new records back to the default.

What causes downtime

  • Cancelling the old host before the new one works.
  • Switching nameservers before copying the records, which drops email and anything else not recreated.
  • Forgetting that email lived at the old host.
  • A domain that expires mid-move, because it was bundled with the old hosting.
  • The new host not having the domain added, so it shows an error page.

Your order of work

  1. Inventory logins and everything on the old host.
  2. Copy the site to the new host.
  3. Test it on the temporary address.
  4. Plan and move email.
  5. Lower TTL, back up, freeze changes.
  6. Switch the website records, or the nameservers.
  7. Check site, forms, email and old addresses.
  8. Cancel the old host after a week or two.

If your site would need rebuilding to move anyway, for example because it is on a builder, you can see your site rebuilt first and make the switch only once the new version is tested and ready.

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