Switching website hosts properly takes about 10 steps and a couple of evenings if you do it yourself, or about three days end-to-end if you have someone do it for you. Get it wrong and you lose email, fail SSL, or end up with broken images. Get it right and nobody notices.
This guide is for UK small business owners who are stuck with a host that no longer works (renewal price doubled, support takes days, control panel nobody understands, site too slow) and want to know exactly how to move without breaking anything. It walks the full process step by step, flags the bits that go wrong most often, and is honest about when it is worth doing yourself versus paying somebody else.
TL;DR: the website migration checklist
If you are about to do this yourself, here is the short version. The rest of the article explains each step and the gotchas.
- Take a full backup of your existing site (files and database).
- Pick your new host and set up an empty hosting account there.
- Copy your site to the new host on a temporary URL.
- Test it on the temporary URL. Click everything. Submit forms. Check images.
- Lower the TTL on your domain’s DNS records 24 hours before the move.
- Re-create your email accounts on the new host (or keep email separate, see below).
- Switch your domain’s DNS to point to the new host.
- Wait for DNS to propagate, usually 1 to 4 hours.
- Re-issue your SSL certificate on the new host.
- Cancel the old hosting account only after a week of stable running.
If any of those steps make you nervous, stop and read the relevant section. Or read about hosting takeover and have someone do the whole thing for you.
On this page
- Why people switch website hosts
- What you need before you start
- The step-by-step migration process
- The most common things that go wrong
- Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify are different
- When to do it yourself vs get help
- When the previous host or developer is being difficult
- How I do hosting takeovers at One Blue Pixel
- FAQ
Why people switch website hosts
Most people do not switch hosts on a whim. There is usually a trigger, and the trigger is almost always one of these.
The renewal price doubled
The biggest reason. UK web hosts use a classic bait-and-switch model: a low introductory rate for the first year, then a much higher renewal price afterwards. £2.99 a month becomes £15.99 a month. £3.49 a month becomes £19.99 a month. Multiply that across a few years and you have paid hundreds of pounds for hosting that was never worth that much.
By the time you spot the renewal email, the company is banking on you not having the time or motivation to move. Some people stay for years out of inertia. The smart move is to leave at the first big price hike.
Support takes days to reply
You email support on a Tuesday. They reply on a Friday with a copy-pasted answer that does not address your problem. You reply asking for a human. Another three days pass. By the time the issue is resolved, your site has been broken for a week.
Cheap hosts make their margins by under-investing in support. The economics only work if most customers never need help. When you do need help, you find out fast.
The control panel is impossible
cPanel, Plesk, custom control panels that look like they were designed in 2007. Every host has its own setup, and most are designed for technical users who already know what an A record, an MX record, or a TXT record actually does.
If you are a small business owner trying to update an SSL certificate or check why an email is bouncing, the control panel is supposed to help you. In practice, it makes you give up and go back to running your business.
Your site is slow
Hosts that share a single server between hundreds of websites are cheap because they are oversubscribed. When the server gets busy, your site gets slow. Slow sites lose Google rankings, lose customers, and look unprofessional.
If your site takes more than three seconds to load on a phone, your hosting is part of the problem. Slow load times also hurt your search rankings now that Google’s Core Web Vitals are a real ranking factor. Better hosting will not fix a badly built site, but bad hosting will sabotage even a great one.
The host got acquired
A common one. The small UK host you signed up with three years ago has been bought by a giant US company. The product is now worse, support is now offshore, and the prices are now higher. Many UK businesses end up moving in this scenario.
What you need before you start
Before you touch anything, gather these. You will save yourself hours of pain later.
- Login details for your current host (account email, password, control panel URL).
- Domain registrar login (often the same company, sometimes separate).
- A list of your email accounts (which addresses, which mailboxes are active).
- A list of any custom DNS records (subdomains, email validation records, third-party verifications).
- A recent backup of your website (download files and database).
- Two hours of uninterrupted time to do the actual switch.
If you cannot find your domain registrar login, that alone could derail the whole move. Find it before you do anything else.
The step-by-step migration process
This is the boring, careful version. Skipping any of these steps is how migrations go wrong.
Step 1: take a full backup
Log into your current host and download a complete backup. Files (the actual website) and the database (where the content lives, if you are on WordPress or anything similar). Most hosts offer a one-click backup option.
Save it to your local computer and to cloud storage. Two copies. Do not skip this. If anything goes wrong later, this backup is your safety net.
Step 2: set up the new host
Sign up with your new host. Create an empty hosting account but do not point your domain at it yet. You want to test everything on a temporary URL first.
Most decent hosts give you a temporary domain like yoursite.theirhostname.com or a numbered staging URL. Use that for testing.
Step 3: copy your site to the new host
How you actually copy the site depends on its size and what you have access to.
Small WordPress sites (a few pages, no large media library) usually move cleanest with a migration plugin. Duplicator, All-in-One WP Migration, Migrate Guru, or similar. The plugin packages files and database into a single archive that you import on the new host. Quick, low-risk for small sites.
Larger WordPress sites (lots of media, big database, ecommerce) I move via FTP/SFTP and a separate database export. Migration plugins can choke on big sites, run out of memory, or silently miss files. Manual is more reliable past a certain size.
Before any of this, I run a full audit of the existing site. That means:
- A page-by-page check for broken content (404 images, missing files, plugins still active but their settings broken, layouts that look fine on desktop but collapse on mobile).
- A plugin audit on WordPress sites. The average WP site I take over has 30 or more active plugins, and a meaningful fraction of those are unused, abandoned, or duplicating functionality. Deactivate, consolidate, replace.
- A check for outdated page builders. This is one of the bigger recurring headaches in WordPress migrations. Older builders that store layout as shortcodes inside post content (rather than as portable HTML) are fragile. They depend on the specific builder version, often the specific theme, and sometimes a paid licence that follows the previous developer rather than the client. If the site is on one of these, the audit step is where I flag it as a risk and we decide whether to migrate as-is, upgrade the builder, or rebuild.
Once the site is live on the new host (still on the staging URL at this point), there are a few standard configuration steps:
- Update database references. On WordPress that’s
wp-config.php. The database name, host, user, and password change with the new host. Match them. - Set up WP Mail SMTP (or equivalent). PHP’s built-in mail function is unreliable at best on most hosts. Use SMTP via your email provider so contact forms, password resets, and order confirmations actually deliver. Test with a real send to a real inbox.
- Configure LiteSpeed Cache if the new host supports it (Krystal does). Default settings are usually fine. Flushing the cache is the first thing to try if the site looks weird after the move.
- Check PHP version compatibility. Old hosts often run PHP 7.4, which has been end-of-life since November 2022. New hosts default to PHP 8.x. Some old plugins break on PHP 8. The audit catches this; the fix is updating or replacing the plugin.
At this stage your site exists in two places: the old host (still serving your real domain) and the new host (sitting on a temporary URL).
Step 4: test everything on the temporary URL
Click through every page. Submit your contact form. Try the checkout if you have one. Check that images load. Look at the site on a phone. If anything is broken, fix it now while the old site is still your live site.
This is the step most people rush. Do not.
Step 5: lower the TTL
TTL stands for Time To Live. It tells the internet how long to cache your DNS records. Default is usually 24 hours. Drop it to 5 minutes a full day before you plan to switch. This makes the switch propagate quickly when you do it. Set it back to a normal value (like 1 hour) once everything is stable.
Step 6: handle email
This is where most migrations break. Email is tied to your domain through MX records. If you change hosts and forget about email, you will start losing messages.
Two common approaches:
- Keep email separate. Use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for email. Email is independent of your website host, so the switch does not touch it. This is the safer long-term setup.
- Move email to the new host. Re-create every email account on the new host. Test by sending yourself a message before you do the DNS switch. Set up your devices to use the new server. Be prepared for a few hours of confusion as old emails route to the old server.
If you can move to a separate email provider before you switch hosts, do that. It removes a whole category of risk.
Step 7: switch the DNS
Log into your domain registrar. Update the nameservers to point to the new host (or update individual A records, depending on your setup). Save the changes.
Now you wait. DNS propagation can take anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours. Most modern DNS resolves in under an hour. With your TTL lowered, it will be quick.
Step 8: re-issue the SSL certificate
Your old SSL certificate was tied to the old host. The new host will need to issue a fresh one. Most decent hosts do this automatically within minutes via Let’s Encrypt or a similar provider. Check the padlock icon in the browser bar to confirm.
If the browser shows “not secure” after the switch, your SSL is not yet active. Do not panic. Wait an hour. If it still says not secure, contact your new host’s support.
Step 9: monitor for a week
Do not cancel the old host yet. Keep it active for at least a week. If anything goes wrong with the new setup, you have a fallback.
Watch your contact form submissions. Watch your analytics for traffic dips. Watch your email. If everything is normal after seven days, cancel the old account.
Step 10: cancel the old host
Log into the old host. Cancel the auto-renewal first (so you are not surprised by another year of charges). Wait for any final invoice. Then cancel the account fully.
The most common things that go wrong
Even with a careful migration, things break. Here are the most common gotchas in UK hosting moves.
Broken images and links. Your site references images and links using full URLs that include the old domain. Sometimes those break during a copy. Use a search-and-replace tool on your database to fix this in one go.
Email goes silent. MX records did not update properly, or the new host’s email is not set up correctly. Test by sending an email from another address. If it does not arrive, your MX records are wrong.
The site looks fine but the contact form does not work. Form submissions need a working SMTP setup. Many hosts disable PHP mail by default. Check your form on the new host and fix the email delivery method (often by using SMTP with your email provider).
Google Search Console alerts. Google may notice the site has moved and flag changes. Re-verify your site in Search Console. Submit your sitemap. This is normal and not a problem if your URLs have not changed.
The old host renewed automatically before you cancelled. Cancel the auto-renewal as the very first thing you do, not the last. You can always reactivate it.
SSL warning in the browser. Almost always temporary while the new SSL provisions. Give it a couple of hours.
Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify are different
If your site is on Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify, this is not a hosting move. Those are platforms, not hosts. Your website lives inside their system and cannot be downloaded and put somewhere else. The site files are not yours in any meaningful sense.
If you want to leave one of those platforms, the path is a website redesign, not a migration. You build a new site somewhere else, then point your domain at the new site. Your old site disappears when you cancel the platform subscription.
When to do it yourself, when to get help
Doing it yourself makes sense if:
- Your site is small and simple (a few pages, no forms doing anything complicated, no ecommerce).
- You are confident with DNS records, SSL, and email setup.
- You have the time to test thoroughly.
- A few hours of downtime would not hurt your business if something goes wrong.
Get someone else to do it if:
- Your site is the main way customers find you.
- You do not know what an A record is, and you do not want to learn.
- You earn money through the site (ecommerce, bookings, lead forms).
- You cannot afford for it to be down on a Friday afternoon.
- You do not have time to babysit the migration for a week afterwards.
When the previous host or developer is being difficult
A reality of this work that nobody else talks about: a meaningful share of the people who come to me for a hosting takeover are not just frustrated with their host. They are scarred from a bad experience with the previous web designer or developer, and they are quietly worried that switching is going to be more painful than staying. If that is you, the honest answer is that it almost never is. But it is worth knowing what the awkward scenarios look like so you can spot them.
The previous developer has stopped responding. They built the site two or three years ago, the relationship soured, and now you cannot get a reply about login details. This is the most common scenario. The fix is not to chase them. The fix is to work with what you do have access to (your domain registrar, your WordPress admin if you have one, your billing account on the host) and use those to recover everything else. Most takeovers can be done without the previous developer’s cooperation at all.
You have been locked out of cPanel or the hosting account. Sometimes the host account is in the previous developer’s name, not yours. Sometimes the password has been changed. Sometimes the access has been deliberately revoked because of a billing dispute. There are still routes around this. If you have WordPress admin access, the database can be exported from inside WP. Files can sometimes be retrieved via the WordPress admin or a recent backup the client kept. If the domain registrar account is yours (it should be, always), DNS can still be redirected.
The domain is registered in someone else’s name. This is the worst version, and it happens more than people realise. The previous agency or developer registered the domain themselves, technically owns it, and refuses to transfer it. There is a process for this involving the registrar’s dispute system and (in extreme cases) Nominet’s domain dispute resolution. It is solvable, but it takes longer and the client needs to be ready for that.
The previous host is being deliberately uncooperative. Some hosts make leaving genuinely painful. Slow support replies when you ask for migration help. Migration “fees” that are really exit penalties. Refusing to provide access to backups you have already paid for. None of this is a blocker, just an extra few hours of friction. I expect it on a meaningful number of takeovers and it never derails the move.
The thing I want to land here: clients who arrive in this state are usually flustered and a bit upset. They have been treated badly and they think it is their fault for not understanding the technical side. It is not their fault. The technical part of getting their site back is solvable. The human part (going through it with someone who is calm about it and not going to bill them by the hour for the panic) is the part that actually matters. That is the part I do.
How I do hosting takeovers at One Blue Pixel
I currently host around 30 small business websites, about 20 of them on WordPress. Some of those clients have been with me three to four years. Average turnaround on a takeover is three days from “you have agreed to move” to “your site is live on my hosting”.
The process is the same one above, but I do all of it for you. You give me whatever access you can (old hosting login if you have it, domain registrar login, WordPress admin login). I audit the setup, plan the move, run the migration on a staging URL, then switch the DNS at a quiet time. Most takeovers complete inside a week with no visitor-visible downtime, including the awkward ones.
The migration itself is a one-off fee, currently from £149. After that, your site sits on my hosting on either the Starter plan at £29/month or the Growth plan at £59/month. No contract, no lock-in. If you want to leave later, you take the site with you.
I am honest about scope: I look after hosting, security, backups, and light text edits. I do not do SEO or new content work on websites I did not build, because the results would not be worth the cost. If your site needs a refresh as well as a host change, a redesign is usually the better move.
Ready to switch?
If you have read this far and decided you want someone else to handle the move, start a project here and I will come back inside 24 hours with a plan. Or if you want more detail on the hosting service, see the website hosting page.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a website migration take? Most takeovers complete inside a week. The actual switch happens in an evening. The week buffer covers testing, DNS propagation, and watching for any issues.
Will my site go down during the migration? Done properly, no. The site stays live on the old host until you switch DNS. Once DNS switches, modern propagation is so fast that most visitors never notice.
What about my email? Either move your email to a dedicated provider like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, or recreate every account on the new host. Plan email separately from the website move.
Do I lose my Google rankings if I change hosts? No. Google does not penalise you for changing hosts as long as your URLs do not change. Your rankings are tied to your content and domain, not your hosting provider.
Can you move me from Wix or Squarespace? Not as a migration. Those are platforms, not hosts, so the site cannot be moved. The route is a rebuild on a real website setup, then point your domain at the new site. See website redesign for that path.
What if my previous developer will not respond? This is the most common awkward scenario, and it is solvable in most cases. Most takeovers do not actually need the previous developer’s cooperation. As long as you have your domain registrar login and (ideally) your WordPress admin login, the rest can be recovered without involving them. Even if cPanel access is revoked, there are routes around that, including exporting the database from inside WordPress when the server itself is locked.
What if I do not even know where my domain is registered? Common, and fixable. A WHOIS lookup on your domain will usually tell you. From there it is a matter of recovering the registrar account login (or, in worst cases, going through the registrar’s account-recovery process). I help clients work through this on takeovers regularly. It is one of the standard early steps in the audit.
How much does a hosting takeover cost? The migration itself is a one-off fee, currently from £149. Then ongoing hosting starts at £29/month on the Starter plan. No contracts, cancel anytime.