Don’t put off moving hosts! Let us take the headache and hard work out of moving to a new web host. Our skilled technicians have migrated thousands of websites and have seen it all.
This ‘white gloves’ migration service is recommended for E-Commerce sites where downtime and mistakes need to be avoided, migrating off a problematic web host, instances where prior migrations have failed, complex DNS structure, if an addon domain split is required or simply if you’d prefer it be done professionally by someone you’ve talked to.
The basic steps of our website migration process are:
- Work with you to obtain the required server credentials from your current hosting platform
- Carefully evaluate your current hosting environment and confirm the suitability of the new hosting package
- Consider the most appropriate migration strategy: cPanel Account Migration tool (with the assistance of new host) or manual FTP migration / imap sync
- We will call you once we have looked over your site and provide you with a full outline and plan, then agree on a suitable time to begin.
- Perform a full backup of the existing site prior to migration
- Begin Migration of the site at the scheduled date &time
- Update DNS/Name Servers on completion of the migration
- Post Migration Tasks: Test site on new server and confirm full functionality, optimise and tweak settings as required, generate new AutoSSL/LetsEncrypt certificate
- Call you after the migration to confirm the site is working as intended, walk you through updating your email settings if they have changed and confirm it is safe to cancel the old hosting package.
If you have any questions about this service, please feel free to give us a call on (03) 9112 5978 or contact us.
Frequently Asked Questions
Migration FAQ’s
- How long should I keep my old hosting service?
We recommend maintaining the hold hosting service for around 1 week to confirm the site is working correctly on the new host.
- Will there be any downtime?
We take downtime seriously and take stratigies to avoid it. For most sites the website will remain live during the migration and suffer no or minimal downtime.
For online stores we recommend putting the site into maintenance or holiday mode during the migration to prevent new orders submitted while the site is copying, not going through
- What are the common migration issues you run into?
Most migrations we perform go smoothly. Those issues we do run into are often easily corrected.
We always test your site prior to updating the DNS records with your old hosting service still live to reduce any downtime.The most common issues we experience are:
- Invalid credentials or the hosting account becoming suspended, requiring the migration needing to be rescheduled
- Minor differences in hosting enviroments requiring configurations to be updated (default php settings, vendor specific configuraiton files needing to be removed)
- Security Plugins such as WordFence freaking out on the new server requring the plugin to be manually disabled
- Caches needing to be cleared
- Hardcoded file paths needing to be updated
- Mail settings (incoming/outgoing server) needing to be updated on email clients
- How long does a migration take?
Typically most migrations are completed in under an hour, however some migrations may take several hours.
Factors which determine how long a migration takes include:
- Speed of the source server and destination server we are migrating between
- Size of the account being moved (website & mailboxes)
- Type of migration (FTP vs transfer tool, restoring from backup)
- If assistance from your new provider is required to initiate the transfer
- If further testing and troubleshooting is required after the migration
- Can you migrate my site off a proprietary page builder such as GoDaddy Website Builder or SquareSpace?
In most cases these platforms do not allow the site to be exported in full and cannot be migrated of their platform.
We are more than happy to review this on a case by case basis and discuss your expectations. - My DNS is hosted separately (ie Cloudflare), can you login and change it?
We are more than happy to make the required DNS changes with your DNS provider.
You can provide us a temporary set of credentials or screenshare on your computer.Alternativly if you would like to update DNS yourself, this is possible.
- Do I need to transfer my domain name to the new provider?
In most cases your domain is seperate from your web-hosting package.
It is often a good idea to keep the 2 components with the same provider, however it can exist on a different provider if only they support a certain TLD (domain extension, such as ‘.com.au’) or offer more competitive prices.We strongly recommend AGAINST transfering the domain to a new provider until the website has been migrated.
- I have a hosting package with many websites, can I just migrate just one site?
This is often possible.
- How soon can you migrate me, I need a new host and assistance immediately!
In most cases we can review your site and begin migrating the site within an hour.
If you do not yet have a new host, we can organise temporary hosting through one of our partners.Give us a call on (03) 9112 5978 and we can see what we can do
- My new hosting offers free migrations, why should I pay you?
This is a fantastic question. In most cases, especially with our recommended hosting partners we encourage you to get their team to migrate the site.
Our service is most suited if you want the ‘white gloves’ treatement of us managing it end to end, or if there are other factors you have concerns about.We encourage you to send us an email or a call on (03) 9112 5978 if you have any questions with this.
- Can I migrate a suspended site
Typically No, we require access to the hosting account to review and download the required files.
In many cases we can contact the existing web-host to temporarily enable the account or provide a full backup.