Most people stay with a hosting company they have outgrown because moving sounds dangerous. The fear is specific and reasonable: the site goes down, email stops, and it happens in the middle of a working day with customers watching.
It is avoidable. Downtime during a migration is almost never caused by the copying — it is caused by doing things in the wrong order.
Why the order matters more than the tooling
A website move has two separate parts: copying the site to the new server, and pointing your domain at it. The copying is safe — nothing changes for visitors while it happens, because the domain still points at the old host.
The risk is entirely in the second part, and specifically in doing it before the first part is finished and tested. Point the domain first and visitors arrive at an empty server. That is the downtime everyone is afraid of, and it is self-inflicted.
The sequence that works
- Copy everything to the new host first. Files, databases, and mailboxes if email is moving too. The old site stays live and untouched throughout.
- Test on a temporary URL. The new host gives you an address that reaches the new copy without involving your domain. Click through the site properly: forms, checkout, logins, anything that touches the database.
- Lower your DNS TTL, a day ahead. TTL is how long the internet caches your DNS. Drop it to five minutes the day before and the switch propagates in minutes instead of hours.
- Do a final sync. Anything that changed since step one — new orders, new posts, new mail — gets copied again, so nothing is lost in the gap.
- Point the domain. Only now.
- Leave the old account running for a week. This is the step people skip.
The two mistakes that cause real downtime
Cancelling the old host too early. DNS does not switch for everyone at once. For a few hours some visitors still reach the old server, and if you have already deleted it they get nothing. Worse, mail sent during that window can be delivered to the old server and lost. Keep the old account alive for a week after the switch — it costs one more month at most, and it is the cheapest insurance in this entire process.
Forgetting email. Website migrations get planned carefully and mail gets remembered on the day. If your mail is on the same host as your site, moving the domain moves the mail too. Mailboxes need copying, and mail clients on people's phones and laptops need new settings. Plan it as its own task, not as a footnote.
What about the SSL certificate?
It does not travel with the site, and it does not need to. The new host issues a fresh certificate for your domain — with free automatic SSL that happens on its own once the domain points at the new server. The only thing to check is that the site is actually loading over HTTPS afterwards, and that any hardcoded http:// links in your content have been updated.
How long does it take?
The copying is usually an afternoon for a normal business site. The DNS switch is minutes if you lowered the TTL beforehand, and up to a day if you did not. Large sites, big mailboxes and complex applications take longer — mostly in testing, not in transferring.
We do this for you, free
If you are moving to OIS, we handle the migration at no charge. We copy the site across, give you a temporary URL so you can check everything works before your domain is touched, and only then help you make the switch.
That ordering is the point. You get to look at the finished result on the new server, on your own time, before anything about your live site changes — which turns a decision that feels risky into one you can verify first.