You might never face the need of migrating a WordPress site to another hosting, or vice versa, your websites might get too much traffic for your current hosting, and as a result, your sites are running slowly. Whatever the reason, you might need to switch to a new hosting, and WordPress website migration has to proceed smoothly.  

I feel you — even the thought of moving your site to a new domain can cause stress. Yet, the experience is not as bad as it seems. Of course, the process requires a lot of preparatory work, but it’s not something you can’t handle. Especially if you have the handy tools — plugins or hostings offering WordPress website migration for free. 

In this article, I will highlight some of the hostings with migration functionality and plugins that can do the hardest work for you. 

WordPress Migration Plugins Essentials

Migrating a site requires several manual steps. You need to duplicate the data, copy content, files, and images to the correct directory trees, restore the database, move and re-expand plugins and widgets. And also, test everything to make sure that the entire process was completed without errors.

This process can be difficult and time-consuming for a site containing thousands of posts and media. There is a risk of data loss and site inaccessibility if migrated incorrectly.

You can back up and migrate data to your site in several ways. The most common include using FTP software and backing up yourself or using a plugin like All-in-One WP Migration to handle the hard work for you. Specialized plugins can simplify WordPress website migration by providing easy configuration, automatic backup of data during migration, and confirmation that data is not corrupted. Let’s review some of them. 

1. Duplicator

Duplicator is a powerful tool designed to enable an admin to duplicate, back up, move, and migrate a site to another hosting. It is one of the most popular WordPress migration plugins in the WordPress ecosystem. It has over 25M active installations and an average rating of 4.9 out of 5. The free version is available on WordPress.org, but there is also a premium version; the price starts from $69.

Main highlights:

• The 3-step configuration wizard helps you install a package consisting of a separate zip file (archive) and installer, scan for possible problems with server settings, archive files, database tables, and then assemble the package.
• You can configure the package to exclude specific directories, file types, and database tables. Detailed reports and logging tool are available at each stage of the migration.
• Open the installation file through a browser to perform a new site installation. Another three-step configuration wizard will extract all files from the archive, create a new database, perform updates, and test the site. 
• The Pro version offers full support and some additional features such as scheduled backups, support for copying to Dropbox, Google Drive and FTP, multisite licenses, and package templates.

You can find full documentation with video lessons on the official website. But the devs warn that Duplicator is not for beginners and requires above-average technical knowledge. 

It is currently not recommended to use Duplicator on multisite networks. Yet, it is a reliable tool for migrating or backing up WordPress sites, duplicating a site to a local server for testing.

2. UpDraftPlus

UpDraft is another popular plugin for WordPress migration, which has more than 3M active installations and an average user rating of 4.9. The free version is available on WordPress.org, but there is also a premium version, which price starts from $70.

Main highlights:

• UpDraftPlus is a powerful plugin that supports cloud storage, automatic backups, and partitioning large sites into multiple archives.
• You can then restore data from a backup to an existing site by replacing themes, plugins, downloads, and other directories with one click.
• The premium version includes additional storage locations, database encryption, improved technical support, and multisite licenses. Also, it offers cloning the site in one click and WordPress website migration to another hosting, which allows you to copy the site and duplicate it in a new place.

UpDraftPlus is an excellent option for non-tech-savvy users, as it offers a clear interface, one-click cloning, and a migration tool.

On the other hand, experienced users will appreciate a lot of storage options and database encryption. And if you have a huge website to migrate or you need to work with a multisite network, UpDraftPlus is a great choice.

3. All-in-One WP Migration

It has more than 4M active installations and 4.6 out of 5 rating. The free version is available on WordPress.org. There are also premium extensions for backing up the website, such as DropBox extension, Google Drive extension, etc.

Main highlights:

• It is a user-friendly migration plugin with export and import features. The export window contains options for finding and replacing text. You can save the export file you created to your computer. The import window allows you to download an export file that will be restored to an existing WordPress assembly.
• An interesting built-in feature is data fragmentation for both export and import, which protects the plugin from timeout and bypasses the size limits of downloads. It is useful when using virtual hosting, which often limits users’ ability to change default settings.
• To access the expanded functionality, you need to purchase premium add-ons. It will increase the size of downloads (up to 5 GB), provide additional storage capabilities (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, OneDrive, FTP), scheduled backups, imports from URLs, and multisite capabilities. All pro extensions offer regular updates and premium support. 

Buying premium extensions can make sense if you need access to multiple storages or the ability to migrate between the network and individual sub-sites completely.

4.VaultPress

VaultPress is only available in the premium version. The free version presented in the WordPress plugin repository provides backup and synchronization features. The migration feature requires a subscription (starting from $9 per month). VaultPress has 50K+ active installations and 4 stars on WordPress.org.

Main highlights:

• This plugin is designed for backup, migration, and security scanning. It synchronizes each record, comment, media file, version, and dashboard settings on its servers.
• You can also use backup and restore to migrate your protected VaultPress site to a new server.
• The plugin allows you to view the history of backups and migrations, and download archives of databases, downloads, themes, and plugins. Backups can be restored via FTP or SSH connection.

VaultPress is especially useful if you need to transfer a huge site or the whole multisite network to another hosting.

5. WP Vivid

WP Vivid is one more backup and migration plugin that has 100K active installation and 4.9 out of 5 stars on WordPress.org. This plugin makes it easier to keep your data safe. It automatically saves all your work in cloud storage and allows you to restore all or any of them easily. It also offers an effortless migration. These are the basic core features; the Pro version offers database backup encryption, sending backups to multiple cloud storage, auto-migration, unused images cleaner, etc. The price starts from $49.

Main highlights:

• Supports large databases (up to 2 GB) and creates backup size limits based on your hosting limitations.
• No backup limits — you can install as many backups on your server as you want. Also, it provides divided backups to separate them into smaller backups, which is useful if you have limits on backup size.
• Deleting temporary files — you can remove all temporary and unnecessary files created during migration.
• Automated migration — WordPress site migration takes one click to be cloned and migrated to a new domain. You can migrate the entire site, particular files, or the database only. 

Simply put, WP Vivid is a WordPress migration plugin that includes all the basic features to ensure your website is safe and provides a convenient migration process.

WordPress Hostings Offering Migration

Apart from that, most hosting providers do offer WordPress migration services. They are usually not advertised, but you can contact support, and they will point you in the right direction. The cost of these services will vary depending on your current hosting provider and the host you are switching to. Yet, many providers offer site migration services for free. 

Let’s take a look at some of them.

SiteGround

SiteGround is an operated WordPress hosting environment fully tailored to everything connected with WordPress. It means that all technical aspects will be covered for you. It’s a nice option for non-tech-savvy guys, so if you like creating and configuring your own servers, then you probably have to choose something else.

SiteGround offers a free WP Migrator and Email Migrator plugins for WordPress users. The only thing you need to do is generate a specific token to initiate migration to the SiteGround account. The number of WordPress websites to migrate is limitless.

Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting that allows you to deploy a WordPress website, choosing Digital Ocean, Linode, etc. Although cloud hosting platforms are usually tricky to manage, Cloudways, on the contrary, is user-friendly and straightforward. It features Application Migration Add-on to migrate your WordPress website with minimal downtime. Within it, you have one free migration and detailed assistance. 

GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks is a WordPress hosting, providing full-pack services, like free SSL, free CDN, unlimited storage (SSD), limitless email accounts, and bandwidth. Also, it provides various server locations in the US, Canada, and Europe. 

GreenGeeks hosting includes one free WordPress website migration. Each next migration will cost $15 per website. Migrating websites with GreenGeeks is a no-brainer because the hosting specialists will get everything covered for you.

Kinsta

Kinsta is a hosting, particularly for WordPress websites, so that you can be sure it provides the best services for this environment. Kinsta offers faster download times for websites, less downtime, and performance problems.

It also offers one free WordPress website migration. The knowledgeable Kinsta team will do everything for you; the only thing you need to do is fill out the site migration request. Also, if you need to transfer more than one website, Kinsta offers a discount for multiple site migration. 

Selecting a Plugin to Migrate Your Website

Choosing the right WordPress plugin (or hosting) for migration is crucial in minimizing the difficulties involved. Understanding which plugin is right for you depends on your technical experience, the complexity of the website being transferred, and the functionality you need.

If you are not a tech-savvy guy and want to use the simplest option, a managed backup solution that allows migration will be the best. UpDraftPlus and VaultPress are great options here, providing special use if you have a multisite network or large sites.

But in case you have technical skills and want to use a tool that will make life a bit easier, Duplicator is likely to be the best plugin for you.

If you need an excellent interface with sufficient configuration capabilities, All-in-One WP Migration will help you with this. 

The multisite networks remain an ambiguous application of WordPress, and most plugins don’t support the migration of either the entire network or individual sub-sites. If you need to do this, you should pay attention to UpdraftPlus and WP Vivid.

That’s it for my short review on WordPress migration plugins. I hope it was useful for you and helped in choosing the best tool to migrate your WordPress website. Don’t hesitate to share your experience and alternatives on this matter.