You should choose to migrate your web hosting from godaddy to another hosting provider if
- Your site goes offline when traffic increases.
- You get irritated by tons of advertisements in your control panel.
- Find it difficult to navigate through the cPanel interface.
- You don’t get reliable customer support.
- Your developers are refusing to work on godaddy hosting.
- You need more disk space for your website.
- You need more functions and resources.
Transfer Hosting From Godaddy To Hostgator
I have mentioned 2 step by step methods to move your website hosting to Hostgator. In both the methods you will be able to transfer your hosting with minimum technical knowledge.
Method 1 is a detailed way of doing the whole transfer by yourself and it will take less than an hour to complete transfer of a website. It may take more time if the size of the website is big.
In Method 2 you can take help from Hostgator to transfer the hosting but this can take longer to transfer hosting.
Also read – Godaddy vs Hostgator
Method 1
Step 1: Setting Up Hostgator Hosting For Transfer
After getting hosting services from Hostgator you need to login into Hostgator Cpanel. Then under the Databases section, you need to click on “MySQL databases”.
Click on “MySQL Users” option in the top-right corner of the page. On the next window, enter Username for your database under “Add New User”.
Enter the password in the password field and click on “create user” to complete the creation of the user for the database.
After you click “create user” you will be asked to assign privileges to a database user you just created. You should select the “All Privileges” box.
Go to File Manager and create a new folder in the “public_html” Folder to store your website file.
You must save all the information about the database and “public_html” folder for later use.
Step 2: Downloading the Backup Of Database On Godaddy
Login in to your Godaddy hosting and navigate to My products tab and click manage in your Web hosting tab.
On next window, click on MyphpAdmin on upper left corner
On the left-hand side of the new window, you will find your databases from which you should select the database of the website you are transferring. The database will expand on the right side, and you will see various tables appearing, like comments, or posts.
Go to top menu and select export
In Export Menu select “Quick and Format” and then select “SQL” as the format of the database. You can leave all other values in setting to the default selection. Hit go and the database will be saved on your computer.
Next, download the files related to website configuration.
Click on “File Manager” under the Files section on Cpanel of Godaddy.
On the next page, find and click on the “public_html” folder that will open its contents on the right side.
Here you select all or select the folder of the website you want to transfer.
After selecting the files click on the compress and select Zip Archive. Then you should download compressed files to your computer.
Make sure that you have downloaded both the website database and the website files from the public_html folder before moving to the next step.
Step 3: Upload Website Files To Hostgator
To upload your database and website files to your new hosting on Hostgator, Go to o phpMyAdmin option under databases in hostgator’s cPanel.
phpMyAdmin contains the list of the databases available to you. Now click on the import tab from the phpMyAdmin navigation bar. Now that you are in the import tab click the Browse button to select the database file that you downloaded in Step 2.
Once you have selected the database file click the go button to import the database files.
After creating the successful importing of the database, import the website files to the folder that you had created in Step 1.
Using file manager navigate to that folder under “public_html” that you created in step 1. Then click on upload to select the zip file that you downloaded in Step 2.
After importing the compressed file you should unzip it in the folder and you are good to move to the next step.
Step 4: Edit Configuration Files
Go to the file manager under the files section. You must go to the “public_html” folder and select the website folder created in step 1.
Find and select the “wp-config.php” to open it in Code editor. Now you should find the “DB_NAME”, “DB_USER”, and “DB_PASSWORD”. You should now change the database name, username, and password with details used while creating a database in step 1.
After updating the highlighted text with information from step 1, you are ready to move to the next step.
Step 5: Adding Domain and Updating Nameservers
Next step for you is to add an Add-on Domain on Hostgator for which you will need to click on “add-on domain” option under the domains section. Here you will be prompted to enter the following.
- New Domain Name you must enter the domain for which you want to transfer hosting to Hostgator.
- Username/directory/subdomain Name You must point it to the folder that you had created earlier under public_html in Step 1 and uploaded files to in Step 3.
- Password This password is for an FTP account which you can just skip for now or use a random password.
Now you would need to change the nameservers to point your domain to your new HostGator hosting.
You should now go back to the Godaddy account then click on the Domains tab. Choose to manage DNS for the domain you are migrating out.
On the next page, you should scroll down to find Nameservers and click on the change button.
You should now replace the Godaddy nameservers with the nameservers provided to you by Hostgator.
Wait for 2 to 6 hours till your domain starts to point to new hosting to test your website.
Also read – How to transfer hosting from one provider to another
Method 2:
Step 1: Backup Your Website From Godaddy
Download your website database from phpMyAdmin and website configuration files from the “public_html” folder.
First, login in to your Godaddy hosting and navigate to My products tab and click manage in your Web hosting tab.
On next window, click on MyphpAdmin on upper left corner
On the left-hand side of new window, you will find your databases from which you should select the database of the website you are transferring. The database will expand on the right side, and you will see various tables appearing, like comments, posts, etc.
Go to top menu and select ‘Export’.
In Export Menu select “Quick and Format” and then select “SQL” as the format of the database. You can leave all other values in setting to the default selection. Hit go and the database will be saved on your computer.
Next, download the files related to website configuration.
Click on “File Manager” under the Files section on Cpanel of Godaddy.
On the next page, find and click on the “public_html” folder that will open its contents on the right side.
Here you select all or select the folder of the website you want to transfer.
After selecting the files click on the compress and select Zip Archive. Then you should download compressed files to your computer.
Make sure that you have downloaded both the website database and the website files from the public_html folder before moving to the next step.
Alternatively, you can also go to Cpanel of your GoDaddy hosting and take the backup of your website by clicking the “backup website” option.
If you are using a WordPress website you can go to WordPress Dashboard > Tools > Export > Click on ‘Download Export File’
You can also opt for paid service provided by GoDaddy that will provide you with the back up your website.
Step 2: Fill Out HostGator Transfer Form
Now you need to transfer the database to Hostgator. You can use free Hostgator service to transfer your hosting which is provided to new users.
You will just need to fill in Hostgator transfer form and just wait. You will need to provide the FTP access to your old host or provide them with the backup of your website that you had taken in Step 1.
It will take some time but the process will complete without any downtime.
Step 3: Adding Domain And Updating Name Servers.
Now you have to add an add-on domain in Hostgator and update the nameservers in the Godaddy DNS or wherever you manage your DNS.
For doing so you can follow the following procedure.
Next step for you is to add an Add-on Domain on Hostgator for which you will need to click on “add-on domain” option under the domains section. Here you will be prompted to enter the following.
- New Domain Name you must enter the domain for which you want to transfer hosting to Hostgator.
- Username/directory/subdomain Name You must point it to the folder that you had created earlier under public_html in Step 1 and uploaded files to in Step 3.
- Password This password is for an FTP account which you can just skip for now or use a random password.
Now you would need to change the nameservers to point your domain to your new HostGator hosting.
You should now go back to the Godaddy account then click on the Domains tab. Choose to manage DNS for the domain you are migrating out.
On the next page, you should scroll down to find Nameservers and click on the change button.
You should now replace the Godaddy nameservers with the nameservers provided to you by Hostgator.
After completing this step your domain will be online and running on your new Hostgator hosting within 2 to 6 hours of changing nameservers.
Check out – Complete Hostgator Review
Final words
Transferring hosting from GoDaddy to Hostgator can be easily done in less than an hour. After transferring out of GoDaddy hosting you can also apply for a refund for remaining unused hosting by raising a ticket.
You should go for method 1 is a Do it yourself method that is quick. If you don’t have time, you can get the Hostgator free transfer service but they will take their time to complete the transfer.