Moving a website to a new host should be invisible to your customers: the site stays up, the padlock stays in the address bar, enquiries keep arriving and nobody’s email goes missing over a weekend. When a hosting move goes wrong, the copying of files is rarely what failed. It is the parts around it: DNS records nobody wrote down, mailboxes that quietly lived on the old server, a security certificate that was never issued on the new one.
I plan a hosting move around those parts first. You get a written record of how your current setup works, a tested copy of the site on the new server before anything changes, and a switchover timed so that, if something does misbehave, putting it back takes minutes rather than days.
When it is time to move hosting
Many UK small businesses run on whatever web hosting came bundled with their domain, or whatever a developer picked years ago. These are the usual reasons to move:
- The site is slow even after the obvious fixes. Budget shared hosting puts a large number of sites on one server, and when a neighbour gets busy, yours waits. If the server is slow to start responding, compressing images will not make the pages feel quick.
- It keeps going down. You hear about outages from customers, and the host cannot explain why the site was offline on Tuesday afternoon.
- The renewal price has jumped. A low introductory rate followed by a much higher renewal is common, and paying more for the same slow plan is a fair reason to look again.
- The software underneath is out of date. An old PHP version or an unsupported control panel will eventually break plugins and leave known security holes open.
- Nobody is sure who controls what. A former developer holds the logins, the domain is registered in their name, and you want everything in accounts the business owns.
A move is the wrong fix when the host is fine and the site is the problem. A WordPress site weighed down by dozens of plugins and a heavy page builder will be slow on any server. If that is what I find, I will tell you, and point you towards technical SEO work on speed and crawling rather than charge you for a move that changes very little.
What the move covers
A record of your current setup
Before touching anything, I document what exists: where the domain is registered, which company runs its DNS, every DNS record and what it does, where email is hosted, which scheduled tasks and forms depend on the server, and which logins the business actually holds. On older sites this step often turns up something nobody remembered, such as a subdomain for a booking system or a verification entry for Microsoft 365.
Choosing the new host
I compare options against what your site needs, not the longest feature list: the platform it runs on, how much traffic it gets, whether you want updates and security handled for you through managed hosting, where the servers are and how support works when something breaks. If the site stores customer details, the server location and the host’s data processing terms matter under UK GDPR, so I check both before you sign up. The hosting account is opened in the business’s name and paid for by the business.
Files, database and server settings
The site’s files and database are copied to the new server and configured to run there. That includes the settings that are easy to miss: PHP version and memory limits, scheduled tasks, file permissions, and any rules in the old server’s configuration that handled redirects or blocked bad traffic. On WordPress, I also check for plugins that store the old server’s paths or tie a licence key to it.
Testing before the switch
The copied site is checked on the new server before any visitor reaches it, either on a temporary address or a staging site. I test the parts that earn money or bring in work: forms, checkout or booking, logins, site search and anything that sends an email. Every form gets a real test submission, and I confirm the message arrives.
DNS, SSL and the switchover
A day or two before the move, I shorten the TTL on the records that will change, so that when they are updated, internet providers pick up the new server within minutes instead of holding on to the old one for a day. An SSL/TLS certificate is issued on the new server so every page keeps its https address and padlock, and I confirm it will renew automatically, because a certificate that lapses quietly a few months later is an easy problem to miss.
Email is where hosting moves do the most damage. If your mailboxes sit on the old host, cancelling that account deletes them. If the nameservers change, every MX record and email authentication entry has to be recreated exactly at the new DNS provider, or mail starts bouncing or landing in spam. I establish where email lives before planning anything else. If it has to move, mailboxes are copied across with their folders, and the change is timed so nothing sent in between goes astray.
Backups and a way back
Before the switch, I take a full website backup of the files, the database and the DNS records, stored away from both hosts. The old hosting stays active until the new site has run cleanly for an agreed period, so rolling back means changing a DNS record, not rebuilding anything.
How I run a hosting move
- Discovery call and access. We go through what the site does and who holds which logins. Wherever a provider allows it, I ask for my own user account or delegated access rather than your main passwords.
- Audit and plan. I document the current setup and write the move plan: what changes, in what order, on which day, and how each step is reversed.
- Build on the new host. The site is copied, configured and tested privately while the old one carries on as normal.
- Agree the switch time. Usually a quiet period for your business, and not while an ad campaign or email send is running. Edits on the old site pause from the final copy until the switch, and on an online shop I take a last copy of orders and customers just before it, so nothing placed in between is lost.
- Switch and check. DNS is updated, then I check the site from outside your network, test forms and email again, and confirm search engines can still reach every page.
- Watch, then close the old account. I keep an eye on error logs, uptime and Google Search Console for an agreed period, and only then tell you it is safe to cancel the old hosting.
Common problems on UK hosting moves
- The domain was registered by a former web designer and nobody can log in to the registrar. Recovering control of a .uk domain can take a while, so I check who holds it weeks before any move date.
- Email was set up years ago on the old host’s control panel, and nobody realised it would disappear with the account.
- Contact forms stop sending because the new server is not authorised to send mail for your domain. The fix is to send through an authenticated mail service with matching SPF and DKIM entries.
- Old pages contain hard-coded http:// links to images and scripts, which trigger browser security warnings on the new certificate.
- The new host’s firewall or caching blocks legitimate requests, including payment notifications, so an order shows as paid at the payment provider but never updates in the shop.
- The old account is cancelled on the day of the move, and the only complete backup goes with it.
What you receive
- A written record of your domain, DNS, email and hosting setup, with each record explained in plain English.
- The move plan and rollback steps, agreed with you before work starts.
- A test log covering forms, checkout or booking, email and your most visited pages, before and after the switch.
- Every login held in an account the business owns, with a list of who has access to what.
- A short handover note on backups, certificate renewal and what to check first if something stops working.
Hosting moves are different from domain and platform changes
A hosting move keeps every web address exactly as it was. Google finds the same pages on the same URLs, served from a different machine, so the search risk is low provided the site stays reachable and nothing blocks crawlers by mistake.
Changing your domain name, moving from Wix to WordPress or restructuring your pages is a different job, because the addresses Google has indexed change. That needs a redirect plan and close monitoring afterwards, which I cover under website migration SEO. If you need both, I keep them as separate steps where I can: move the hosting, confirm it is stable, then change the site. Two changes on the same day make any problem much harder to trace.
What it costs
The price depends on the size of the site, whether email has to move as well, and how much of the current setup is undocumented. A small brochure site whose email already runs on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is a far smaller job than an online shop with custom server rules. I quote each move in GBP once the audit of your current setup is done, and the price is agreed in writing before any work starts. The hosting itself is paid directly to the hosting company.
Next step
Send me your website address, the company you host with now and what is prompting the move. I will reply with what I would check first, and whether a move is likely to fix the problem you have. Tell me about your site and your current host.