Free Web Hosting Migrations
Posted on October 23rd, 2015
InterServer offers Free migrations for cPanel to cPanel servers, or DirectAdmin to DirectAdmin servers. Please be aware we do not offer migrations to webuzo, plesk or other panels. Additionally migrations are done as full accounts, either to a new account or overwriting an existing account. Some exceptions may exist such as pulling a single site like a wordpress site (one folder and mysql database).
Shared Hosting Migration
Please note
* Migrations may take 24 hours to begin. Migrations are done by a dedicated team that does not work 24/7. Rushed migrations are not possible.
* Please ensure that there is ample time for a migration. It is recommended that the previous / source hosting account have at least 7 days left once a migration begins.
* If the source server can not generate a backup, or download due to resource, space or slowness a backup may not be possible.
* Compromised sites are cleaned on a best effort basis.
* Sites coming from end of life MySQL/Mariadb may not be compatible with modern database systems and may fail migration.
* Sites that run an end of life PHP version ( please see https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php ) may fail migration.
* Sites encoded in ioncube or similar software may not be possible to debug for errors and should be planned for accordingly.
* Migrations are not offered between different control panels with any guarantees. Additionally a full backup from cpanel or directadmin can not be merged into an existing account. For these, consider a reseller account to have multiple accounts in a single package. In order to restore a full backup, the username must be the same between the old server and new server.
While InterServer makes a best effort to migrate systems will be running a modern and supported PHP version and MySQL databases. Sites that do not support these modern versions are more difficult to migrate and may suffer from code rot and security issues and be unsupported by the original author.
Basic info) For a standard shared hosting migration please have a full cPanel backup ready for download. You do not need to upload it to your new InterServer shared hosting account, however doing so will save some time. The current InterServer account should have no data in it, as the backup will overwrite any data. The username on the account may change during the restore, in order to match the username in the backup.
Your responsibilities) After a restore please log into the account to check the data, for example email accounts in cPanel and files in public_html. The MySQL database count and email accounts should match, and the space usage be very close between the two accounts. Before cancelling your old account, the dns should be changed and the account confirmed to be working.
Possible problems) Due to PHP differences you may need to change the PHP version in cPanel->select PHP version. Old php.ini / .htaccess files may need to be modified as well. If there is not sufficient disk space free, a backup in cPanel may not be possible.
Other) If a full cPanel backup is not possible, due to the previous host disabling the backup, or old server being too slow to make a backup, a normal migration is not possible. In these cases InterServer can copy the files via FTP from the old host to the new host. However this does not include MySQL and cPanel settings like sub-domains which must be manually restored. For MySQL your responsibilities would include taking a database dump and uploading the data to your InterServer account for a InterServer tech to restore.
Potential Email issues) There may be differences between formats in directadmin. If email is compressed between the source server and restoring server on a compressed email format that is unsupported email migration may fail. For this reason only same control panel migrations will be able to restore email services. Any conversion between cpanel or directadmin may result in non working or inability to restore email. For this reason choose the same control panel your current backup is one.
Reseller Hosting Migration
Basic info) A reseller migration is done with out the root password. This means a standard copy using WHM is not possible for all accounts. Each account must be backed up to a full cpanel backup in a place for InterServer techs to download and restore on your new vps/reseller account or server. This backup must be available via wget/curl, ftp, or sftp.
Your responsibilities) After a restore is completed verify that the list account section has all accounts and that disk space is similar on both ends. You should also check some accounts for email and mysql to ensure they are fully copied.
Possible problems) Due to PHP differences you may need to change the PHP version in WHM->Apache builder/easy Apache. Old php.ini / .htaccess files may need to be modified as well. If there is not sufficient disk space free, a backup in cPanel may not be possible.
Non cPanel systems
– For systems transferring from another control panel to cPanel, a free migration by cPanel is offered at http://cpanel.net/cpanel-whm/migrate-cpanel/ with your cPanel license.
– For non cPanel systems with out a control panel, InterServer can copy the files in ftp over to a new account. Mail, MySQL and any other data not with in FTP is not included, including no email migration.
Will there be any down time during the migration?
There is absolutely no down time during the migration. Even after the DNS servers are switched. Website traffic will either reach your old hosting company or new hosting company during the first 24 hours. We recommend not doing any website updates or maintenance during the migration period to ensure that the data is in sync.
Steps involved in migration
Let’s see how the migration is taking place and what are the steps involved in the typical cPanel to cPanel migration process.
Taking full website backup
This is the first step we usually take. A full website backup is needed to migrate a cPanel website. In this case, migration just means moving a backup file to another server and restoring it on that server. Let’s see how to take a backup using cPanel.
1) Go to Files >> Backup in the cPanel
2) Click on ‘Download a full website backup’ button as shown in the figure.
Now you’ll be navigated to a new window.
3) Click on ‘Generate Backup’ as shown in figure.
Now your backup will be generated. It will take some time to finish the backing up of your website. You can choose to send an email notification to an email address from this page, if you wish to do so.
When you get the email notification, you can verify the backup file from the cPanel interface also. Now we can proceed to the restore process.
4) Now set the permission of the backup file to ‘644’ from cPanel interface.
5) Now SSH to the server which you want your website to be transferred to.
6) Run the following command to download the backup file.
# wget old.ip.addres.s/~username/public_html/backup_file_name
This will download the backup file to the new server.
7) Now you can restore the account in the new server by running the following script.
# /script/restorepkg path_to_backup_file
8) The account is now transferred successfully. Now you need to update the DNS records with the IP address of the new server. You need to do this at registrar end and in the zone files also.
If you need any further assistance please contact our support department.
I have Hostgator and am not happy with them.
I host a bunch of small web sites mostly do nothing sites or domains I and my son own.
The one big site is mainattraction.net. It forwards to cms.mainattraction.net/2009 .
I want to migrate the whole server over to you folks. It is less than 15GB. Where do we go from here.
They are CPANEL sites and WordPress is used on Mainattraction plus others.
Ray
Ray,
First order a web hosting package for that domain name. Then contact our support department with the login details to the old hosting company so we can start the migration.
Hi!
I already have an Interserver VPS…. But we are planning to migrate for a dedicated server…. Is there a way to restore my full VPS backup in this new dedicated box? Re-install everything again isn´t in our plans….
there is no way to restore a backup. a migration would need to be done. we can help with this.
I want to migrate my whole website to my new domain name which I bought from you.
Please help. thank you.
please open a ticket with us so we can guide you in the right direction.
If I have say 3 hosting accounts are there a limit on website migrations, is only one or how many?
We can do a one of one migration. You would need 3 accounts with us to do the migration.
thank you.
I am well satisfied with interserver specially the tech support people – (guys you are absolutely superb!). They’re really fast and helpful in helping me and thats the reason why I am migrating all my websites to Interserver. I am all thumbs up!
Hi, if I ask for a migration, do you keep the data in the original hosting, or you delete it?
we do not delete data off original location.
Why do you want to charge me $ 30 each domain if the migration costs $ 6 for each domain according to what I have seen in this link? It doesn’t sound fair. https://www.interserver.net/free-website-migration.html
Hi, i recently bought a domain(icreatemagic.online) and a hosting account(icreatemagic.io) separately. How do i synchronize the domain to the hosting account?
Hello,
I apologize for the delay in responding to your query. I can see icreatemagic.online is linked to the hosting account.
If you are experiencing any issue please feel free to contact us back.
Regards,
I trying to migrate from Bluehost, but they are making it hard.
I am most interested in a seamless email transition, can we do it? they remove the cpanel full backup
We can use imapsync tool for email migration if the source server is using imap. Feel free to contact our Live Chat support via https://chat.is.cc/livechat?mode=popout
Our support team will be able to assist you with any service you have ordered through us.
in your free Migration, it says cPannel to cPannel only does that mean since I run my current server with DirectAdmin and would be ordering a server with DirectAdmin from you guys then you would not migrate my current server over to the new server hosted by you guys
Migration is supported for Directadmin as well. Feel free to contact our Live Chat support via https://chat.is.cc/livechat?mode=popout
Our support team will be able to assist you further with details.
So I have a website hosted on inter-server but my friend wants to host his domain on my hosting plan. He is also using inter-server hosting, Is it possible to migrate his 2 websites without losing any website data.
Because in the above guide it’s mentioned that the data will be lost( of the server where we are migration.)
You can add friend’s domain as add on and migrate the files without any data loss (manual migration). cPanel to cPanel (full backup) restoration will overwrite existing data.
I have 2 websites with email. How do I migrate all of these over?
Hi Sarah,
Can you please send an email to [email protected], we can assist you.