If you are frustrated with your current hosting provider for its poor service, its better to change the hosting before you make a big loss in terms of traffic, valuable readers or business.
I am going to discuss under what circumstances you should change your hositng company in the end of this article.
Before that, let’s understand how to move to another hosting company. Here you will find the step by step guide for moving to another host without any disruption.
How To Transfer Web Hosting From One Company To Another
Most of the hosting providers use Linux based hosting that has identical CPanel. This makes the job of transferring from hosting easy and quick. There can be a few differences in the Cpanel of different providers.
Step 1: Downloading the Backup Of Database From Old Hosting
Login into your old hosting to find and open phpMyAdmin under the database section.
phpMyAdmin would almost work similarly across Linux based hostings. Here Find the database for the website you are trying to migrate.
You can select the database from the left-side menu that will open the selected database on right. Now you would need to download this database by clicking on “export” in the top menu.
On the next page, select “Quick” as the export method and then select “SQL” as the format of the database and click on the “Go” button.
Next, you will be prompted with the menu to either open or save the database file. You should select the option to save the file and then save it on your computer.
Next, download website files from the “public_html” folder. You would need to find the “file manager” in the files section on the Cpanel of your old hosting. On the next window, you will find the details of files on your hosting.
From here you can select all or select the folder related to your migrating website. After selecting the folder click on compress and Zip Archive as the format. You can then download the compressed folder to your computer for later use.
Make sure that you have saved both the website database and the website files before moving to the next step.
Step 2: Setting Up Your New Hosting For The Transfer
Login into the CPanel of your new Linux based hosting. Then find the databases section and click on “MySQL databases” option under it.
Next, create a new database user that you will use later. So, you would need to click on “MySQL Users” option in the top right corner of the page. Then set username and password and click “Add New User”
Assign a strong password or use “password Generator” to generate a strong password. Then click on “create user” to complete the new user creation process.
Now, go to File Manager and create a new folder in the “public_html” of your New hosting. You will need this folder to store the files of the website you are migrating into new hosting.
You must save all the information about the database and the “public_html” folder to be used later.
Step 3: Uploading To Your New Hosting
You need to upload your database and website files on to your new hosting. You would find the phpMyadmin option under the database section on CPanel of your new hosting.
Click on the import tab from the phpMyAdmin navigation bar. In the next window, you need to click on the Import tab and use the Browse button to select the database file from your computer that you downloaded in Step 1.
Once you have selected the database file click the go button to import the database files.
After successfully importing the database you need to import the website files to the folder that you had created in Step 2.
You should use the file manager to navigate to the folder under “public_html” that you created in step 2. Then click on the upload tab in the top menu bar and next window will prompt you to select the files.
Now select the zip archive downloaded in Step 2. It will get uploaded in some time depending upon its size then you need to uncompress the folder.
Once uncompressed you are ready to move to the next step.
Step 4: Editing Configuration Files
Go to the File Manager under the files section. Go to the “public_html” folder and select the website folder created in step 2.
After successful imported files in step 3 then you will find the “wp-config.php” file. You need to select and click the Code editor option in top menu bar.
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 new database user in step 2.
After updating the highlighted text with information from step 2, you are ready to move to the next step.
Step 5: Adding Domain and Updating Nameservers
Add the domain of your migrating website on your new hosting.
Find the addon domain option in your hosting Cpanel under the domain section. Add the new domain that you want to migrate. You will also get the option to select the folder for the domain from which you should select the database folder you created in step 2.
After adding the domain you would need to point your domain to your new hosting for that you need to change nameservers of your website.
You should now go to the site where you manage your DNS. Here you would need to choose to manage DNS for the domain you are migrating out of.
On the next page, find the nameservers and change them with nameservers provided by your new hosting.
After changing the nameservers it will take 3 to 6 hours for the website to start pointing to the new hosting.
Also read – How to migrate website from Godaddy to Hostgator
When You Should Migrate Your Website From One Company To Another
Here you will find a few situations under which you should migrate your website from one hosting company to another.
#1. You Don’t Get Reliable Customer Support.
Technical support from your hosting provider acts as a blessing when you face any issue with your website. There are times when a server error occurs you should be able to connect your hosting provider and get an immediate solution for that.
If it is difficult to contact your hosting provider for technical support or even issues related to billing then it is better to change your hosting.
#2. Your Site Is Constantly Going Offline.
If your website is unavailable to users even for a few seconds it is a serious problem. If your site is down that sends the signals of it being unreliable to both search engines and the users.
If you face downtime frequently then google algorithm will take note of that and your search engine ranking will fall. The users will also stop visiting your website as it is not available when they most needed it.
Moreover, If you generate revenue from your site that will also suffer and you will lose hundreds of dollars for every second of downtime.
If your website is continuously facing downtime that means your hosting provider is not reliable. It is better to move on to some reliable hosting provider.
#3. Your Site Takes A Lot Of Time To Load.
Speed of your site plays a crucial role in SEO and ranking of your website. It also affects the user experience that would drive the users away from your website.
The website loading speed also gets affected by the amount of traffic you are getting and the location of your hosting servers. You can also use Content Delivery Networks to better your site loading speed.
If your hosting provider doesn’t provide an option to handle increasing traffic or is located in a faraway location than your target audience. You should change your hosting provider to a reliable hosting provider which have servers near your target audience.
#4. You Have Been Hacked, More Than Once.
Secure web server is crucial for your website to be reliable and better ranking on the search engine. Although hosting providers are not always responsible for most of the hacking attacks.
If you were hacked more than once even after securing your website vulnerabilities. In such a case your hosting provider is unable to secure your website leading to multiple attacks and compromises. You should act quickly and switch you hosting to some reliable and secure hosting provider.
#5. You Need More Functions And Resources For Your Website.
The most website starts with shared hosting that can lead to longer downtime with increased traffic. You might have grown your website over time and receive a high level of traffic now. Your shared hosting server might not able to handle the size of your website and the traffic you are receiving.
In such a case you should move to dedicated hosting and if your hosting provider doesn’t provide that you switch to the different hosting provider.
#6. Your Current Hosting Is Expensive.
If you are just getting started or have a website that is small but you are getting a large amount of bill for hosting. It can because of your hosting plan that comes with lots of features that you had never used.
It doesn’t make sense to pay for features you don’t need. You should switch to low-cost hosting plans from your hosting provider. If your hosting provider doesn’t provide low-cost hosting you should better switch to another budgeted hosting provider.
Final Words
Even if you have limited technical knowledge you can easily migrate your website on your own. If you still don’t want to do it yourself then you can use a hosting provider that provides you with free migration service.