Can I move my website to a new host?

What actually moves

Worth separating, because people conflate them and then panic:

Your domain stays. It is registered separately from hosting. Moving hosts does not change your address, and visitors see nothing different.

Your files and database move. The site itself is copied to the new server.

Your email might move. If your email runs on the same hosting, this is the part that most often breaks, and the part people forget until it does.

The order that prevents downtime

1. Set up the new host and copy everything across. Files, database, any configuration.

2. Test on the new host before switching anything. Most hosts let you preview a site before the domain points at it. Check the pages load, the images resolve, the forms submit, the database is intact.

3. Lower the DNS TTL a day before. A small technical step with a real payoff — it makes the switch propagate in minutes rather than hours.

4. Point the domain at the new host. This is the actual switch. Because both copies exist, most visitors experience nothing.

5. Watch for a day or two. Some visitors will still be reaching the old server while DNS updates spread, which is why the old one stays live.

6. Only then cancel the old host. Give it a week.

Reversing any of these steps is how people end up with a site that is down for a day, and the reversal is always the same one: cancelling early to save a month's fee.

The three things people forget

Email. If your mail is on the old hosting, moving the domain moves your mail with it. Sort out where email will live before you switch, or you will discover it when enquiries stop.

SSL. The new host needs its own certificate. Most issue one automatically, but check — a security warning on your site the morning after a migration is a bad way to find out.

Cron jobs and scheduled tasks. Backups, reports, anything scheduled. These do not travel with the files and they fail silently.

After the switch

Check, rather than assume:

• Every important page loads, not just the homepage
• The contact form actually delivers — send a real test
• Your email sends and receives
• The certificate is valid and there is no mixed-content warning
• Search Console shows no crawl errors after a few days

When it goes wrong

The site looks broken. Usually a database connection or a file permission issue. The old host is still live, so revert the DNS and take your time.

Some people see the old site. Normal for up to a day or two while DNS propagates. Both being live is what makes this harmless.

Email stopped. The most urgent one. It means mail records moved with the domain. Fixable, and much easier to plan for than to repair.

If someone manages this for you

You do not need to run any of it. You do need to confirm three things:

• The domain is registered to your business, not the old host
• You have a copy of the site independent of both hosts
• Email is handled explicitly as part of the move

Those three turn a migration from something you have to trust into something you can check.

Moving to a managed platform instead of another host

A different version of this question, and increasingly the more common one: not "which host next" but "do I want to be running a host at all".

Moving onto Helm is the same migration described above, with one difference — the checklist in the previous section is the thing being delivered rather than the thing you have to verify afterwards. The domain goes into your business's name, you keep a copy of the site, email is handled explicitly, and the DNS switch happens with both versions live so there is always something to revert to. After it, the parts that used to require a host — certificates, backups, updates, the 3am outage — stop being tasks you own.

The three questions at the end of this article still apply, and you should still put them to us. A migration you can check beats a migration you have to trust, whoever is running it.