How to move your website to a new provider

Check these before you tell the current provider you are leaving. They are much easier to sort out while the relationship is still working.

• The domain registrar account. You should be able to sign in yourself. Whoever controls it can change where the website and email point.
• A list of the DNS records. Every record, including the ones for email (MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC).
• The website's content. The files, or at least the text and images, and any documents visitors can download.
• Analytics and Search Console. A business account as owner or administrator, so the history moves with you.
• The contract. The notice period, any minimum term, and what the provider has agreed to hand over.

If you are missing any of these, our guide to who owns your business website explains how to find out who holds them.

Step 1. Give notice, and ask for everything in writing

Give the notice your contract requires and ask the current provider for a list of the accounts they hold for you, a copy of the site files and an export of the DNS records. Agree the date their service ends.

Step 2. Make an inventory of the current site

List every page address. Search engines and customers know your site by these addresses, and any page that moves needs a permanent redirect to its new address. Note the contact form, booking links and anything else the site connects to.

Step 3. Build and test the site in its new home

The new provider builds or moves the site and gives you a preview address. Check every page on a phone and a computer, and send a test enquiry. Nothing about your live site changes during this step.

Step 4. Prepare the DNS

Decide whether the move changes only the records that point at the website, or the nameservers as well. If the nameservers move, the new DNS provider must hold every existing record, email included, before the switch. If the domain uses DNSSEC, its DS record at the registrar has to come off, and its time to live pass, before the nameservers change.

Step 5. Switch the domain

Change the records or nameservers at a quiet time of the week. Changes can take a few hours to reach everyone, so the old and new sites may both be seen for a while. That is why the old service should stay running until the move is confirmed.

Step 6. Check everything works

Send and receive an email on your domain. Submit the contact form and confirm the enquiry arrives. Visit a few old page addresses and check they redirect. Check the site loads over HTTPS without warnings.

Step 7. Tell Google

Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and check for errors over the following weeks. If page addresses changed, the redirects from step 2 are what keep your existing search visibility.

Step 8. Close the old service last

Only once the site and email have worked on the new setup for a few days should the old hosting be cancelled. Remove the old provider's access to your accounts, and keep a copy of the old files.

Your email and your website usually share the same domain and the same DNS. Email is often hosted somewhere else entirely, such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, but it relies on records in the DNS to work. If those records are missing when the DNS moves, email stops arriving, often without anyone noticing for a day or two.

The fix is simple: copy every DNS record before anything moves, and check email straight after the switch. A provider who mentions this before you do is a good sign.

• Cancelling the old hosting before the new site is live.
• Moving the nameservers without copying the email records first.
• Changing page addresses without redirects, which loses search visibility.
• Letting the domain renewal lapse in the middle of the move.
• Forgetting the contact form, so enquiries keep going to the old provider's setup.

If the old provider cannot be reached at all, the order is different. Our guide to what to do if your web designer disappears covers that case.

Keep moves existing websites by rebuilding your current pages, up to five, on its own setup using your existing words, photos and branding. Page addresses are inventoried, kept where possible and permanently redirected where they must change, and your email records are preserved. The fee is agreed before work starts, and the care plan begins once the new site is live. The website care page for existing websites sets out the prices and terms.

The same care applies in the other direction. If you leave, every DNS and email record is handed over within two working days, and the site files follow once the account is settled.

• Who actually owns your business website?
• What happens if your web designer disappears?
• What website access should a business owner keep?

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