Moved properly, with nothing lost on the way
Websites, mailboxes, databases and domains moved between hosts and platforms – planned, tested on a staging copy, and cut over in a window that suits your business rather than ours.
The move is easy. Not breaking anything is the job.
Copying files across is a twenty-minute task. What takes skill is everything around it – keeping search rankings, keeping years of email, keeping URLs that other sites link to, and keeping the business trading while it happens.
We migrate onto a staging copy first, test it properly, then cut over in a planned window with the old environment still intact behind us. If something is wrong, we go back – we do not troubleshoot live on your only copy.
- Tested before cutover. Nothing goes live until it has been checked on a staging copy.
- Rollback available. The source environment stays untouched until you confirm you are happy.
- SEO preserved. URLs, redirects and metadata carried across deliberately, not by accident.
- Email intact. Full mail history, folders, contacts and calendars, with deliverability records rebuilt correctly.
Six kinds of move, often several at once.
WordPress and CMS sites
Full site moves between hosts, including plugins, themes, media libraries, users and configuration.
Business email and mailboxes
Mail moved between providers with folder structure, history, contacts and calendars preserved for every user.
Hosting and server moves
Shared to VPS, VPS to cloud, or provider to provider – including the configuration work the new environment needs.
Domains, DNS and certificates
Transfers, nameserver changes, DNS records and SSL reissued, sequenced so nothing goes dark mid-move.
Databases and applications
Application and database moves with dependency checks, connection strings and scheduled jobs re-established.
E-commerce stores
Products, orders, customers and payment integrations moved with the store trading throughout wherever possible.
The checklist that separates a move from an incident.
- Pre-migration audit of the current environment
- Full backup of source files and databases
- Target environment setup and configuration
- Staging build and functional testing
- URL, redirect and permalink mapping
- Mailbox transfer with full history
- Mail authentication records rebuilt
- SSL certificate installation and forced HTTPS
- DNS sequencing and TTL planning
- Planned cutover in an agreed window
- Post-migration checks and monitoring period
- Handover documentation and credentials
Usually one of these, sometimes several.
Six steps, and nothing irreversible happens before step five.
Audit what exists
Current hosting, versions, plugins, mailboxes, DNS records, integrations and scheduled jobs documented. Most migration failures are things nobody knew were running.
Back everything up
A complete, verified copy of files, databases and mail taken and stored before any change is made anywhere.
Build on staging
The full environment reconstructed on the target, on a temporary address, so it can be tested without touching your live site.
Test and hand over for review
Forms, payments, logins, integrations, page speed and mail flow all checked – then you review the staging copy and approve it before we go anywhere near DNS.
Cut over in a planned window
DNS changed at a time agreed with you, with TTLs lowered in advance so propagation is quick. The old environment stays live and untouched throughout.
Monitor, then hand over
A watching period after cutover for mail flow, errors and search console warnings, followed by documentation and every credential transferred to you.
The damage is rarely visible on day one.
What people expect to go wrong
A few hours of downtime during the switch, and some broken images to tidy up afterwards.
What actually goes wrong
Redirects lost, so years of accumulated search authority quietly disappears. Mail authentication records not rebuilt, so invoices start landing in spam. Both are discovered weeks later, when the traffic and the payments have already gone.
A migration is judged three months later – on the rankings and the email you still have.
What you have when we finish.
A working environment you control, plus the documentation to hand to whoever maintains it next.
- Live site and mail on the new environment
- Every credential transferred to you
- Redirect map and DNS record documentation
- Backup of the original environment
- Post-migration test results
- Notes on anything we recommend fixing next
Hosting accounts are opened in your name, on your billing. We do not resell hosting and we do not hold your infrastructure on our accounts.
Built for businesses whose website and email actually matter.
If enquiries, orders or client correspondence run through the systems being moved, the cost of doing it carefully is small compared with the cost of doing it twice.
Honest note: for a small brochure site with a couple of mailboxes, most decent hosts will migrate you free. We will tell you that rather than quote for work you do not need – call us when there is genuine complexity, or when something has already gone wrong.
- Businesses moving off slow or unreliable hosting
- Companies with years of email history to preserve
- Sites with meaningful search traffic and rankings to protect
- E-commerce stores that cannot afford a trading outage
- Organisations consolidating several providers into one
- Anyone recovering from a migration that went badly
The things worth knowing before you start.
Will the site go down?
In most cases, no. Because the new environment is built and tested before DNS changes, and TTLs are lowered in advance, visitors move across without seeing an outage. Where a short window is genuinely unavoidable, we agree the timing with you first.
Will we lose email during the move?
No. Mail is synchronised to the new provider before the switch and re-synchronised afterwards to catch anything that arrived during the change, so nothing falls into the gap.
Will our search rankings be affected?
Not if the URLs stay the same and redirects are mapped properly, which is a standard part of the work. Where the platform or URL structure is changing, we build and test the redirect map before cutover and monitor for errors afterwards.
How long does a migration take?
A straightforward site and a handful of mailboxes: a few days including testing. A larger site with many mailboxes, integrations or a platform change: one to three weeks, most of it testing rather than moving.
Do you choose the new host?
We recommend based on what your site actually needs and what it will cost you to run, not on what pays a commission. The account is yours, and you are free to pick something else.
What if something breaks after cutover?
The original environment is left intact and we monitor for an agreed period after the move. If a problem cannot be fixed quickly on the new environment, reverting is a decision rather than a rescue operation.
The rest of the technical side.
WordPress Development
Building, extending and maintaining WordPress sites that are meant to be worked on. Read more
Backup Solutions
Automated, tested backups, so a bad day stays a bad day rather than becoming a bad quarter. Read more
R&D Solutions
Research and development work for problems that do not have an off-the-shelf answer yet. Read more
Tell us what needs moving. We will tell you the risks.
Send us the current hosting, the number of mailboxes and where you want to end up. We will come back with a plan, a window and a fixed price.