Migrate Your Website To Another Hosting Provider: How Easy Is It Really?

Your organization’s site or webshop is parked somewhere with a hosting provider. What if you want to move? Does it just happen and what should you watch out for?

Changing the energy supplier is not that difficult, there is the Easy Switch Code for telephone and internet and you can keep your telephone number and even your e-mail address. But what about your website? Before that, you once worked with a hosting provider, but a lot may have changed in your business since then. Does the technical framework still meet your requirements? And what about the support? Changing the hosting provider is also possible and no problem even with complex sites or web shops.

“A migration to another web host is sometimes done in a day,” says Jonas Weytens from Combell. It supports companies as part of the Combell Mover service, which the provider uses to help new customers switch from a previous provider.

Move after problems

“The main reason we’re seeing customers churn is because they want more comprehensive and accessible support,” he outlines. “Migrations for this reason usually start after something goes wrong with the website and the company in question is not happy with the relationship with the previous provider. There are also technical reasons for a change, e.g. B. higher availability, better connections to the Internet backbone that improve the speed of a website, caching systems and (DDoS) protection. Besides the speed gain, it is also a fact that websites hosted in their own country get a better SEO score.”

According to Weytens, the main trigger is problems with a former partner. From then on, migration will be on a company’s agenda, albeit with caution. “Certainly less technical organizations are afraid to move. The word migration scared and they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Move with little effort

In practice, a migration requires very little time and little effort on the part of the customer. Weytens: “Actually, the customer only has to provide the access data to the control panel of their current hosting provider. Ideally, we also get a login for the CMS.”

With this information, the new hosting provider’s relocation service can get to work. What happens next depends on the type of website your company has. The principles are always the same, but the approach differs between a simple website, a complex (multi)site and a web shop.

FTP or SSH

“For a modest site, we just set up an FTP connection to the new server,” says Weytens. “We then make a pure 1:1 copy, which is stored on our hosting server.” FTP is not the ideal solution for a large site, we prefer to work over SSH. We then synced the original website to the new server location with the same result.”

We make a pure 1:1 copy, which is stored on our hosting server.

Jonas Weytens, Combell

The time it takes to create a copy depends on the size of the website and the internet connection. It’s often a matter of hours before a perfect clone of the original site is up and running on the new web host.

Check and preview

The clone works just like the original, although migration specialists should take a look at the underlying CMS to be on the safe side. There they check again whether all plug-ins have been transferred with the correct licenses, because sometimes they have to be reactivated. During this process, the old website will continue to run and visitors will still land there.

Before the actual switch, customers can check for themselves whether their website is actually running properly. “We provide customers with a link to the new environment so that they can check everything before the domain name is transferred,” emphasizes Weytens. He points out that this preview option is quite unique to Combell and therefore not necessarily representative of a switch to another provider.

change of address

If the site runs smoothly in its new environment, then it’s time for the actual address change. After creating the clone, the domain name (e.g. www.itdaily.be) still points to the original host’s servers. “Now the customer has to create an A record and point their domain name to the new hosting provider,” says Weytens. “Sometimes the customers also hear thunder in Cologne. We can usually also take care of most of the work to implement this customization.”

The DNS A record is a simple record that associates a domain name with an IP address. In other words, the A record refers to a specific server at a specific host. By adjusting this address, the domain name points to the server at the new hoster.

The domain name and hosting provider are otherwise separate from each other, but Weytens sees that many customers find it easier to transfer the domain name to the new provider immediately when migrating. Above all, this has practical advantages. “We can then simply point the A-Records to our server without the customer having to request the changes from a third party,” adds Weytens. “In this way, everything is correctly credited to the customer without having to get his hands dirty with technical things.”

Online shop

Once the A record is adjusted, visitors entering the website’s URL will end up at the new host’s version. The migration is now complete with no downtime. So easy, although Weytens points out that certain websites, such as webshops, still require a few extra steps.

The migration is now complete with no downtime.

After all, new orders are constantly being received in a web shop. For example, between copying the site to the new host and changing the A record, there is a period where customers can still place orders on the old site that would no longer be synced to the new server.

In this case, the new provider can, in consultation with the customer, carry out a new synchronization of the database at the last moment before the change of address takes effect. “At this point, the orders have to rest at the original location for a while,” Weytens notes. “The customer can then, for example, deactivate the shopping cart for half an hour until the last synchronization is complete and customers end up on the new page.”

A migration, not a trajectory

In IT, migration is often a dirty word in connection with an extensive and time-consuming project lasting weeks or months. A website migration is a different beast. “Actually, a website can move to another hoster within 24 hours,” Weytens repeats. “The time that the customer can make available to us is an important factor. We just need a few details, but sometimes it takes a while to get them. Everything is usually ready within four working days. If the migration is a complex environment with around twenty locations, it will of course take a little longer.”

There may be other delay factors. Weytens: “Organizations may not want to share full access to the control panel. We fully understand that, but then we need a bit more specific information to set up the sync.”

Businesses often put off a website migration because it seems like a major hurdle, but the reality is different. With a few details, it is enough to choose a new hoster and let the movers do the rest of the work. Don’t put your phone too far away and take some time to give the preview of the moved website the green light and before you know it, your website will be living on another server.