WordPress

How to Migrate WordPress to a New Host Without Downtime

Moving hosts sounds risky and mostly is not — as long as you copy first and switch DNS last. Here are the three real methods, which one fits your site, and the exact order that keeps your site online while it moves.

By Mohit Koli•August 24, 2026•Updated September 13, 2026•11 min read

Migrating a WordPress website to a new host, step by step

This article contains affiliate links. If you buy hosting through one of them I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you — and in most cases you get a discount that is not on the public price. Pricing was checked against Hostinger India in September 2026; always confirm the current figure at checkout.

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The short answer

Back up your site, copy it to the new host before touching your domain, test the copy on a temporary URL, then change your nameservers. Because the old host keeps serving visitors until DNS propagates, nobody sees an outage. Most hosts will do the whole copy for you free — that is the easiest and safest route for the large majority of sites.

The three ways to move a WordPress site

Every migration guide online is really describing one of these three. Pick by how large your site is and how much you want to touch.

Method	Best for	Effort	Risk	Time	Cost
Free host migrationrecommended	Almost everyone	Lowest	Lowest	Under 2 hours (typical WordPress)	Free with most hosts
Migration plugin	Small-to-medium sites, DIY	Medium	Medium	30–90 min	Free tier available
Manual (files + database)	Developers, unusual setups	Highest	Highest	1–3 hours	Free

If you are unsure, take the first row. Hosts offer free migration because a customer whose site moved smoothly is a customer who stays — the incentives are genuinely aligned, and it costs you nothing.

Before you start: the five-minute checklist

Almost every migration horror story traces back to a skipped item on this list.

Take a full backup and store it off-server. Files, database, themes, plugins, uploads, and wp-config.php. Download it to your own machine or cloud drive — a backup that only exists on the host you are leaving is not a backup.
Note your current PHP and WordPress versions. A site still running PHP 8.0 or 8.1 can throw fatal errors from old plugins on a newer server — and as of September 2026 Hostinger's hPanel offers only PHP 8.2 to 8.5 (8.3 by default for new sites), so test the old site on PHP 8.2 or newer before moving. WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong” (20 May 2026) dropped PHP 7.2 and 7.3: the minimum is now 7.4, the recommended version is 8.3, and PHP 8.4 and 8.5 are fully supported. The current release is WordPress 7.1 “Mary Lou” (19 August 2026), with 7.1.1 scheduled for 17 September 2026. If an old site is stuck on WordPress 6.x because its server runs PHP below 7.4, fix the PHP version before migrating rather than after.
Lower your DNS TTL to 300 seconds, a day early. This is the trick most guides skip. A low TTL means the internet picks up your nameserver change in minutes instead of hours.
Pick a genuinely quiet window. Not during a sale, a campaign, a product launch, or a newsletter send.
Do not cancel the old hosting. Keep it running for at least two weeks. It is your rollback, and it costs a few hundred rupees.

Method 1: Let the new host move it (easiest)

You buy the plan, fill in a form with your old host's login details, and their migration team copies the site across. You do not touch files, databases, or FTP at any point.

On Hostinger this lives in hPanel under Websites → Migrate Website, and you track progress under Websites → Migrations. You submit one request per website (up to five active at a time) and their team handles it; Hostinger says a simple WordPress migration is typically done in less than two hours, while cPanel-based sites on other CMSs usually take more than 20 hours. Two things to sort out first: turn off two-factor authentication and any anti-bot protection on the old host, and make sure there is enough free disk space on the source server for the export to be built.

You can hand over WordPress admin login details, cPanel login details, or your own backup archive (.zip, .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz, .7z or .gz) plus a .sql database file. The service is free on Web, Cloud and Agency plans but not on VPS, and as of September 2026 it does not support WordPress multisite (use Method 3) or WordPress.com-hosted sites, and it does not move email — mailboxes have to be recreated separately.

If you are choosing the new host right now

Free managed migration, an India (Mumbai) data-centre option, a free domain for the first year and a 30-day money-back window make Hostinger the low-risk default for a standard WordPress site. The refund covers the hosting plan; a free .com, .net or .org domain is only refundable within 96 hours of registration, and its standard price may be deducted from a hosting refund. Single (₹69/mo) is the cheapest tier but hosts one website with no free domain, so Premium at ₹149/mo (3 websites, 20 GB, free domain for the first year) on the 48-month term is the realistic starting point; if you are moving a store or a busy site, the Cloud tier from ₹599/mo gives you dedicated CPU and RAM.

Check Hostinger Plans →

Affiliate link. Confirm the total at checkout before you pay.

Not sold on Hostinger specifically? That is fair — compare the field in best web hosting in India first, and read the renewal pricing breakdown before committing to any host, because the intro rate is never the real rate.

Method 2: Migrate it yourself with a plugin

Good middle ground: you stay in control, and you do not need to touch a database. The three plugins worth using are all in the official WordPress directory.

Plugin	Free tier limit	Best for
All-in-One WP Migration and Backup	No cap of its own; limited by your host's PHP upload settings	Small blogs and brochure sites. Easiest interface of the three.
Duplicator	500MB for DupArchive-format archives; no fixed cap with ZipArchive; multisite needs Pro	Medium sites, and anyone who hit the host upload limit above.
Migrate Guru	Free (as of September 2026: v6.72, tested up to WordPress 7.1, 200,000+ installs); sites up to 200GB	Large sites — the transfer runs on its own servers, not through your browser.

The sequence

Install the plugin on the old site and export. You get one archive file.
On the new host, install a clean WordPress and the same plugin.
Import the archive. The plugin overwrites the fresh install with your real site.
Log in with your old credentials — the import replaced the new site's user table too. This surprises people every time.
Go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save twice to regenerate rewrite rules.

If the export stalls or the import times out, it is almost always your host's PHP upload limit or an execution-time limit. Switch to Duplicator or Migrate Guru rather than fighting it.

Method 3: Manual transfer

Only worth it if you have an unusual setup, a multisite, or you simply prefer knowing exactly what moved. Four stages:

Files. Download everything in your WordPress root over FTP or SSH, then upload it to the new server.
Database. Export the database as SQL from phpMyAdmin on the old host, create an empty database on the new one, and import.
Reconnect. Edit wp-config.php with the new database name, user and password.
Fix URLs if the domain changed. Use a search-replace tool rather than a plain SQL find-and-replace — WordPress stores serialised data, and a naive replace corrupts it.

That last point is the one that catches developers who have not done this in a while. Widget settings and theme options are stored as PHP serialised strings with length prefixes; changing the text without updating the length breaks them silently.

The DNS switch — where downtime actually comes from

This is the part worth getting right, because it is the only step where visitors can be affected.

Test the copy first. Preview it on the new host's temporary URL, or add an entry to your computer's hosts file pointing your real domain at the new server IP. You will see the new site while everyone else still sees the old one. On Hostinger, a temporary domain ends in .hostingersite.com and opens from hPanel via Websites → Dashboard → Preview; for the hosts-file route, take the IP from Websites → Dashboard → Plan Details → Website Details, add it against both domain.tld and www.domain.tld, and revert those lines once you are done.
Click through the pages that matter. Homepage, a post, a category, the contact form, and checkout if you have one.
Then change nameservers at your registrar to the new host's.
Leave both servers running during propagation. Some visitors hit the old host and some the new one for a few hours — which is fine, and exactly why you do not cancel the old plan.

One real risk to plan around

If your site takes orders, comments or form submissions, anything submitted to the old server during propagation will not appear in the new database. For a normal blog this does not matter. For a store, put the site in maintenance mode for the switch, or migrate at 3am and accept the small gap.

After the switch: what to check

SSL certificate. Issue a fresh one on the new host. A mismatched certificate throws a browser warning that will scare off every visitor.
Email. If your email was on the old host, moving nameservers moves your MX records too. Check that mail still arrives — this is the most commonly forgotten item on the entire list.
Forms and payments. Submit a real test through every form and, if you have a store, run one test transaction.
robots.txt and indexing. Staging environments often ship a Disallow: / or a site-wide noindex. Confirm neither followed you across.
Search Console. Run a URL inspection on a few pages to confirm Google can still fetch them.
Speed. Re-test. If the new host is meant to be faster and is not, caching probably needs turning on.

What does this actually cost?

Item	Cost	Notes
Host-managed migration	₹0	Included by most hosts to win the signup.
Migration plugin	₹0	Free tiers cover most sites; large sites may need a paid extension.
New hosting plan	From ₹149/mo	The actual cost of the move. Verify the current rate at checkout.
Overlap with the old host	2–4 weeks	Deliberate. This is your rollback insurance.

The other half of the equation is what you are moving away from. If you are leaving because of a renewal spike, the numbers in why GoDaddy renewals jump 2–4× are worth reading before you commit to a new provider — and check what your new host renews at, not just what it costs today.

Five problems and their fixes

White screen after import

Almost always a PHP version mismatch or a plugin conflict. Hostinger no longer lets you select PHP 8.1 or lower, so update or replace the failing plugin rather than trying to downgrade PHP.

Cannot log in on the new site

The import replaced the user table. Use your old site's username and password, not the ones from the clean install.

Images show but links 404

Permalink rewrite rules did not carry over. Settings → Permalinks → Save, twice.

Mixed-content warnings

Some URLs are still http. Run a search-replace for the http version of your domain, then reissue SSL.

Email stopped working

Nameserver change took your MX records with it. Re-add them at the new DNS host.

FAQ — WordPress migration

Will my site go down during a WordPress migration?

It should not, if you migrate in the right order. Copy the site to the new host first, test it there using a temporary URL or a hosts-file entry, and only change your DNS once the copy works. Because the old host keeps serving traffic until DNS propagates, visitors move across gradually rather than hitting an outage.

How long does a WordPress migration take?

Hostinger says a simple automatic WordPress migration is typically done in less than two hours, while cPanel-based sites built with other CMSs usually take more than 20 hours. A plugin migration on a small site takes 30 to 90 minutes of your own time. DNS propagation then adds up to 24-48 hours, though in practice most users see the new server within a few hours.

Is WordPress migration really free?

Usually, yes. Most hosts include free migration to win your business, and the main migration plugins have working free tiers. The real costs are your time and, if you use a plugin on a large site, possibly a paid upgrade to clear the free upload limit. Professional migration services exist but are rarely necessary for a standard site.

Do I need to move my domain too?

No. Hosting and domain registration are separate services. You can keep the domain where it is registered and simply point its nameservers or A record at the new host. Moving the domain as well is optional — worth doing only if your registrar's renewal pricing is poor.

Will migrating hurt my SEO or rankings?

A clean migration to the same domain should not affect rankings. Your URLs do not change, so there is nothing for Google to re-map. Problems only appear when something breaks in transit — missing pages, a stray noindex tag, a robots.txt that blocks crawling, or broken internal links. Check those after you switch.

What is the maximum file size for All-in-One WP Migration?

The free All-in-One WP Migration and Backup plugin does not set an import size limit of its own — the ceiling is your host's PHP upload settings. Sites too large for those settings either need the Unlimited Extension ($69 a year for up to 50 sites), which transfers data in small chunks to get past those server limits, a different plugin such as Migrate Guru, or a host-managed migration. Hitting that host limit is the single most common reason a DIY plugin migration stalls halfway.

Should I migrate during business hours?

No. Pick your lowest-traffic window and avoid sale periods, campaign launches, and newsletter sends. Even a well-planned migration has a window where the old and new servers are briefly out of sync, and you want as few people as possible seeing that.

What should I do if the migration goes wrong?

Nothing is lost as long as you took a full backup before starting and did not cancel the old hosting. Revert your DNS to the old host, confirm the original site is serving normally, and then diagnose at your own pace. This is exactly why you keep the old plan running for a couple of weeks.

Final verdict

For the overwhelming majority of WordPress sites, the right answer is the boring one: buy the new plan, submit a free migration request, test on a temporary URL, switch DNS, keep the old host running for a fortnight. No FTP, no phpMyAdmin, no downtime. Reach for a plugin if you want to stay in control, and go manual only when the setup genuinely demands it.

The one rule that matters more than the method: copy first, switch last, and never cancel the old host until the new one has been serving cleanly for two weeks. Get that order right and a migration is a boring afternoon rather than an emergency.

Ready to move?

Free managed migration, a Mumbai data-centre option, free SSL, a free domain for year one and 30 days to change your mind. Premium from ₹149/mo, Cloud from ₹599/mo.