The very first step in changing web hosting providers is to find one that meets all your requirements. You should have some experience from your last search, but let’s still review the main issues. Take a good look at the disk space and bandwidth your new plan will provide. Your website’s needs may grow over time, so buy a little more than you need and check what happens if you go over your plan’s limits. Also make sure that the new web hosting provider offers the same tools and software as your old one. Ask technical support whether the software and scripts in the offer are already installed and set up. It would be a bad experience to find out after migrating your website that not everything works because some software needed to be activated first. Many hosts will also move your website for you for free, so ask about that before you start.
Sign up for the new hosting plan. It sounds obvious, but the thing to watch is to sign up for the new one while you still have about two weeks until your old hosting plan expires. This gives you time to react if anything goes wrong during the move, and makes the transition smoother for your visitors and customers.
Update your backup copy of your website. You do have backups, don’t you? If not, this is a very good place to start. Keep a full backup somewhere safe outside your hosting account, such as on your computer or in a cloud storage service. Your backup should include the entire website: files, images, folder structure and databases.
Upload your web site to the web servers of your new web hosting provider.
Now it is testing time. Most web hosting providers will offer you the possibility to preview your web site before it goes live. Use this feature to test if your web site looks good and its functionalities are all intact on your new web server.
Continue by setting up your existing email accounts on the new web server. It’s a good idea to write down the new incoming (IMAP or POP3) and outgoing (SMTP) mail settings you will soon be using.
If you haven’t changed your website’s design with this move, it’s a good idea to put a small mark on the pages on your new server to tell them apart from the old ones. This way you will be able to tell when your DNS information has been updated, which is the next step.
It’s time to change your nameservers. As anxious as you might be to move, it’s a very good idea to let your visitors and customers know about the change of web host and apologize for any downtime your website might have. I don’t need to tell you how important this is for the image of your business.
Now you can ask your registrar to change your DNS (nameserver) information, or, if you can change it yourself in your registrar’s control panel, go ahead and do it.
All you have to do now is wait for the new DNS information to spread across the internet. This can take up to 48 hours, but you will often see the change within a few hours.
The final step is to update the email apps you use with the new incoming and outgoing mail settings.
You have successfully changed your web hosting provider. Good luck with the new one!