You can move a small business website to a new host without it going offline. What makes it work is the order: the new copy has to be running and tested before your domain points at it, and the old host stays on until the change has spread everywhere.

What you need before starting

  • A login for the current host (control panel, or FTP/SFTP).
  • A login for wherever your domain's DNS is managed. This is often the company you bought the domain from, not the host.
  • The new hosting account.
  • About two hours, plus a few days of overlap during which you pay for both hosts.

Check email before anything else. If your addresses (info@yourbusiness.com) are provided by the old host, moving the website can break them. Check your domain's MX records first. If they point to the old host, plan the email move separately or leave email where it is.

Step by step

  1. Lower the DNS TTL. A day before the move, lower the TTL of your domain's A record; 300 seconds (5 minutes) is a common choice. On switch day, the change will then reach visitors within minutes instead of hours.
  2. Take a full backup of files and database, and download it. Do not leave the only copy on the old server.
  3. Copy the site to the new host. For WordPress, a migration plugin or the host's own migration tool is the simplest route. For a static site, upload the files.
  4. Test on the new server before switching. Many hosts give you a temporary address, or you can edit your computer's hosts file to point the domain at the new server. Click through the main pages, send a test message through the contact form and check that images load.
  5. Switch DNS. Change the A record (and the AAAA record, if you have one) to the new server. Leave the MX records alone unless you are moving email too.
  6. Turn on HTTPS at the new host. Many hosts issue a free certificate once the domain points to them. Check for the padlock on each type of page.
  7. Keep the old host running for a while. A week is a simple default: a few visitors will still reach the old server for a short time. Do not change content on either copy until you switch the old host off.

Must have and nice to have

Must have: a backup, testing before the switch, HTTPS, and a working contact form and email.

Nice to have: a staging site, a CDN, server-level caching. Add them later if the site is slow or you change it often.

Choosing the new host

For a small business site, look for a plan that includes SSL, backups you can restore yourself, and support that answers within hours. Hostinger's web and WordPress hosting plans include free SSL certificates, and Hostinger migrates existing websites for free, which takes care of copying the site (steps 2 and 3). Testing before the DNS switch is still worth doing yourself. If your site has heavy traffic or runs custom server software, a VPS or managed cloud hosting is the better fit.