Transfer Desk Brief
Hosting with free migration — Copying the site is the easy half
You already know where you want to be; what you are dreading is the hour when the files, the mailboxes and the registration are all half-moved at once.
The short answer
Take hosting where our own team does the move, usually within 24 hours, with nothing switching until you approve the copy — and treat the registrar transfer as a separate job from the DNS cutover, because they run on different clocks and merging them is what causes the outage people fear.
Three things get called 'moving hosts'. Copying files, databases and mailboxes to the new server. Changing where the name points, which is a DNS edit or a nameserver change. And transferring the registration to a new registrar, which is a registry operation. Only the first two affect whether your site is up, and the third can wait as long as you like.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
NVMe
Storage on every plan
Free
Year one of the name
99.9%
Uptime, monitored
Flat
Renewal figure
This page is for switchers who know their destination and dread the transfer itself. Fear of the move keeps more customers with a poor provider than any contract ever has.
So the useful thing a registrar can do here is take the sequence apart. Once you can see which step affects visitors, which affects mail and which affects nothing at all, the whole job stops looking like one irreversible afternoon.
Three jobs, routinely mistaken for one
The copy is ours: files, databases, mailboxes and the configuration nobody wrote down. It changes nothing visitors can see, because your old provider goes on serving every request throughout.
The cutover is a record change, and it is the only step visitors notice. Either the A record moves to the new address or the delegation moves to new nameservers — one is a small edit, the other hands the whole zone over, and it matters which you choose.
The registrar transfer is a registry operation driven by an unlock and an EPP authorisation code. It moves who bills you for the name. It does not move your site, your mail or your records, and it can happen weeks before or after everything else.
The order that never breaks mail
Mailboxes first, MX records second. Create the accounts at the destination, check you can send and receive, and only then repoint the MX records. Do it the other way round and mail arrives at a server with no matching account and bounces on the spot.
Bring the SPF and DKIM TXT records over in the same session as the MX change, or authenticated mail from your name starts failing checks it used to pass. Messages sent during the changeover queue and retry for hours, which is why an ordered move usually loses nothing at all.
Drop the TTL on the records you are about to change to 300 seconds the day before. Caching is the whole of what people call propagation, and a short TTL is the only thing that makes a mistake cheap.
What the registrar transfer does, and what it gives you
Unlock the name at its current home, clear any transfer or privacy lock, and ask for the EPP authorisation code — most registrars email it within minutes. Paste it into our form, click through the confirmation, and most transfers finish within a few days of your approval.
Whatever registration time remains carries over. A standard gTLD transfer adds a full year on top, charged at the ordinary renewal rate, and on most popular endings that extra year is free. A handful of country-code and specialist endings do not permit it, and we flag those before checkout.
Two registry rules constrain the timing: the name must be at least 60 days old and cannot have changed registrar in the past 60 days. Neither prevents you moving the hosting in the meantime.
What we need from you, and what we do with it
Credentials for the old hosting — cPanel or FTP — and a ticket telling us to start. Mailboxes, databases and whatever undocumented quirks are buried in there become ours to solve. You look the finished copy over and choose the switching time.
Nothing changes in DNS until you approve what you see. With both copies live the traffic drifts across as caches expire, so nobody outside the process notices a thing.
The plan, and the window to test it in. In our own range the answer is the Turbo plan — SSL, the inbound move and mail included, the renewal charged at the order rate, and headroom above it.
Mailboxes at your own name are part of the plan — mail is included, not sold back to you at the checkout. Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller, which is long enough to run a real site rather than a demonstration.
One honest caveat from the registrar's side: registrations are not refundable. The registry fee is spent the moment a name is claimed or renewed, and nobody in this trade can recover it.
The unprofitable advice, published anyway
The most useful sentence on this page costs us a sale: you do not have to transfer the registration to move the hosting. Point the existing name at us and keep your registrar if you like it.
The smallest plan gets the same NVMe storage and server-level LiteSpeed caching as the largest; that is the baseline rather than an upsell.
- Engineers do the copy, not a plugin
- Nothing switches until you approve it
- A bonus year wherever the ending allows
- TTL lowered before any record moves
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
The copy happens before anything switches
Our engineers move files, databases, mailboxes and configuration while your old provider keeps serving every visitor.
Mail moved in the right order
Accounts created first, MX repointed second, SPF and DKIM carried across in the same session — which is what keeps nothing bouncing.
A bonus year on the transfer
Bring the registration in and most endings gain a full extra year on top of the term you already hold, at the ordinary renewal rate.
No downtime to schedule
A transfer changes who administers the name; your records ride across untouched, so there is no outage window to book.
A refund without an argument
If we are not the fit, leaving the hosting is one request rather than a negotiation. Registrations are the one thing nobody can refund.
The verdict, turned into an order
This page's verdict, available to buy: the Turbo plan, one rate, the essentials already in it.
Prices Side by Side
How our prices sit against the majors
What the market typically charges to join and to renew, set beside ours, including the renewal figure most comparison charts leave out.
| Feature | Hosting & DomainsMost popular | Typical household-name host | Typical bargain host | Typical loss-leader deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price / mo* | $2.42/mo | $4–$6 | $2–$4 | $1–$3 |
| Renewal price / mo | $2.42/mo | $10–$15 | $8–$12 | $4–$6 |
| Entry-level plan renews at the price you signed up at | ||||
| SSL as standard | ||||
| Migration done for you | ||||
| NVMe drives on the entry-level tier | ||||
| Backups run every day from the first tier up | ||||
| Real humans on support, 24/7 |
*Our own column shows the lowest-priced annual plan on our books, pulled live from the same catalogue that feeds the pricing page, which is why it cannot go stale. Beside it sit three columns holding the ranges that hosts in each bracket tend to advertise: introductory rates that normally ask for one to four years up front, then climb once the term runs out. Naming rivals and printing their figures is something we gave up, since a price nobody can verify on the day you happen to read this has no business on the page. Measure us against the host you are actually weighing up, and give the renewal row the hardest look of the lot.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Lower the TTL, then let us copy
300 seconds the day before, and a ticket with your old login. The copy runs while your current provider serves every visitor.
- 2
Move mailboxes, then MX, then the site record
Mail is the fragile half. Accounts first, MX second with SPF and DKIM alongside, and the site's A record when you are satisfied.
- 3
Transfer the registration whenever you like
Unlock, take the EPP code, start it here. Nothing about it is urgent, and nothing about it touches the running site.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Our engineers carry the site across at no charge, mailboxes included
- A bonus year wherever the ending allows on a transfer in
- Secure verification through the EPP code
- Full editing rights over MX, SPF and DKIM records
- Mail answering at the registered name, not a borrowed one
- Year two billed at the year-one rate on the hosting
- Upgrade without a migration, and without touching a record
- Daily copies, with the restore run by you rather than requested
- cPanel, the panel the industry standardised on long ago
- Caching in the web server itself, not a plugin on top
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
Do I have to transfer the domain to move the hosting?
No, and plenty of customers never do. Point the existing name at us with a record change or a nameserver change and the site moves while the registration stays exactly where it is. Transferring the registration is a separate decision about who bills you for the name.
Which comes first, the registrar transfer or the DNS change?
The DNS change, if you want the least risk. Get the site and mail working on the new server while the registration sits untouched, then transfer the name later at your leisure. Doing both at once means that if something looks wrong, you have two candidate causes and no way to separate them.
Does transferring lose the registration time I have already paid for?
No. Whatever term remains carries over, and a standard gTLD transfer adds a full year on top at the ordinary renewal rate — free on most popular endings. A few country-code and specialist endings do not allow the extra year, and we say so before you reach checkout.
What happens to mail sent during the changeover?
It queues and retries. Sending servers keep trying for hours, so a message that arrives mid-switch lands once the destination is answering. Anything that reached the old mailboxes before the MX change can be collected there afterwards, which is why we leave the old service in place until you are satisfied.
Keep reading
Web Hosting
cPanel hosting on NVMe — engineers do the copy, and year one of the name is inside the price.
Magento Hosting
The memory and PHP headroom Magento genuinely asks for, on a name you already hold.
Changing provider? Work through this checklist beforehand.
A straightforward running order for a migration your visitors never spot: which files travel first, how to bring the mail across without dropping a single message, the right moment to repoint DNS, and the two errors that sit behind almost every outage we get called in to fix.
Move the site. Keep your registrar if you like it.
Free SSL, a free migration, a bonus year on most transfers in, and renewals billed at the original rate.
View Web Hosting plans