How to Switch to a New Web Hosting Company

You have a site hosted with a company that gives you good service, but you think another company could be better/cheaper/more responsive/etc. While moving your site could seem daunting, the process is not as difficult as you think.

The following should be done before you do anything with the hosting account your moving from (i.e. do not cancel that account yet), and before you do anything with your domain name:

• Order a new hosting account from the web hosting provider of your choice.
• Login to your new account. Once your new account is setup and the login information has been sent to you, login to your new account and setup all your email addresses. When doing this, take note of your new POP3 and SMTP email settings that you will eventually have to enter into your email client (i.e. Outlook Express or Eudora).
• Upload your web files (i.e. website, databases, scripts, etc.) to your new hosting account. You will have to use the account's IP address to do this, since your domain name is still pointing to your old hosting account. If you used FrontPage to create your site and need a new copy of your site on your hard drive, check out our tutorial here.

Once you're satisfied you have all your files moved over to the new hosting account, you'll want your domain name to start pointing to the new server, instead of the old one. Continue with the following steps:

• Change the DNS settings of your domain name to point to the new hosting account's nameservers. You do this through your domain name registrar. If you used your hosting copmany to register your domain, you should look at transfering it to a third party. This will keep your domain and hosting seperate, in case an issue ever arises with your hosting company in the future. We recommend Dotser. Once you make these changes, it may take 24 to 72 hours for propagation to complete. Once that's finished, your domain name will be directing traffic to the copied version of your website on the new server, at the new web hosting company. Also, your email will all be going to the new hosting account (which is why you would have wanted to setup your email addresses prior to this).
• Modify your POP3 and SMTP email settings in your email client (i.e. Outlook Express or Eudora) to the new settings for your new hosting account. As soon as you make these changes, any email that was sent to you after the DNS propagated would have been stored on the new server.... and should now download into your email client.
• Check and double-check to make sure that everything is running smoothly on the new server, and that all your files, images, databases, etc have been successfully loaded. You should check in the old hosting account to make sure there are no new database entries, form submissions etc, that could have arrived in the 48 hours prior to propagation being completed (in which case they would have arrived in the old account). If you find anything that is not in the new account, copy it over. Also check to make sure you have all your server-side scripts running OK, as often times it is necessary to make adjustments in the scripts based on the relative locations of certain files.

Once you are satisfied that you have everything you need from the old account, and everything is running smoothly with the new account, you can cancel your old account. You have successfully switched to a new web hosting company!