HostGator Website Migrations

HostGator offers FREE professional website migration services for new accounts on Shared Business, Cloud, WordPress, Reseller, VPS, and Dedicated hosting or an upgrade to these accounts that may require a server move within 30 days of signup or upgrade and inter-server migration⤵ between HostGator servers.

HostGator is committed to migrating your site to your new hosting account easily. We can migrate website files, databases, scripts, and one free domain registration transfer. If you have additional domain registrations you would like to transfer to HostGator, please see the following article:

How Can I Transfer My Domain to You?

This article covers the following:

What qualifies me for a free migration? ⤵
What if I do not qualify for free migration but still want my sites moved? ⤵
Are there any sites that HostGator cannot Move? ⤵
Types of migration ⤵

What qualifies me for a free migration?

HostGator provides a limited number of free migrations from other hosting providers or inter-server migration⤵ between HostGator servers for new accounts within 30 days of signup. For your free migration, please fill out our Request Migration Form.

If you have already used your free migration (or if you are outside of the 30-day window) and you would still like to have HostGator migrate your content for you, then fill out the Request Migration Form, and an administrator will provide you with a quote for the migration. For more information on how to fill out the Request Migration form, please refer to this article: New Content Transfers Form.

Note: Free migration services are only offered for "as-is" migration of website content and data with no updates to the site configuration, aside from database connection details. Copying an existing site to a new domain or changing the URL of an existing site would NOT be free.

Example: WordPress must be configured for the location it is installed to. Migrating a WordPress site from mydomain.com/site to mydomain.com/ or myotherdomain.com/ would require reconfiguration to function after the migration and would not be eligible for free migration.

If you are unsure about your eligibility for free migration, please contact us via phone or chat with a description of your need.

Free Migration by Hosting Plan

The number of free migrations we offer varies depending on which type of account you sign up for. Please refer to the chart below to see what is included in the new packages.

Total Free Migration- the total number of websites that HostGator will migrate for you
Full cPanel Migration- the number of cPanel to cPanel to be migrated included
Max. Manual Migration- the maximum number of manual migrations⤵ included with your account

Account Type	Total Free Migration	Full cPanel Migration	Max. Manual Migration
Linux Shared Business ⤵	1	1²	1
Cloud (Hatchling) ⤵	1	1²	1
Cloud (Baby) ⤵	1	1²	1
Cloud (Business) ⤵	1	1²	1
Optimized WordPress (Starter) ⤵	1 Blog	Not Available	Not Available
Optimized WordPress (Standard) ⤵	2 Blogs	Not Available	Not Available
Optimized WordPress (Business) ⤵	3 Blogs	Not available	Not Available
Reseller ⤵	30	30²	30
VPS ⤵	Unlimited¹	Unlimited²	0 - 90³
Dedicated (Value, Power, and Enterprise) ⤵	Unlimited¹	Unlimited²	100
Windows Shared Personal ⤵	1	1	1
Windows Shared Enterprise ⤵	1	1	1

¹ While HostGator can do unlimited cPanel to cPanel migration, depending on the account type, you will have a limited number of manual migrations ⤵ .

² Full cPanel migration includes all domains, addon domains, subdomains, and cPanel settings. This will also include your email accounts and emails. Please note that this does require your old host's cPanel backup generator to be active.

³ The maximum number of free manual migrations for each VPS plan is as follows:

Snappy 2000 - 50 manual migrations
Snappy 4000 - 70 manual migrations
Snappy 8000 - 90 manual migrations

A Few Examples...

An Aluminum Reseller account includes up to 30 free migrations. Out of these 30, you can have 20 cPanel to cPanel migrations and ten (10 ) manual migrations ⤵, or any combination of the two that totals 30 or fewer websites.
A Power Dedicated Server includes unlimited cPanel to cPanel migration; this means you can have 150 sites (or even more) migrated. Also, since unlimited migration exists, you can utilize up to 100 manual migrations ⤵.

Did you know upgrading from a hosting plan of the same type usually does not require a server move and therefore does not need a migration?
For example, upgrading a Shared hosting account from Baby to Business does not involve moving any files; instead, you are allocated more resources. Migrations are only required for upgrades to a different hosting type, like going from Shared to Reseller.
To learn more about the upgrade/downgrade process, please read the following articles:

Shared and Cloud Account Migration

(Business (Linux) Shared, Hatchling Cloud, Baby Cloud, Business Cloud)

Please submit the Request Migration Form to initiate your website content migration. We can move your content and databases for one website or cPanel from another host.

Optimized WordPress Migration

(Starter, Standard, Business)

The migration is performed using a combination of WordPress XML export/import and command-line tools to install plugins and themes. Only plugins and themes freely available on the WordPress.org repository can be installed. Premium (paid) themes or plugins can be provided to the migrations team for installation from our end.

Optimized WordPress accounts do not include cPanel access, so a full cPanel migration is impossible.

To request a migration, please complete our Request Migration Form to begin your migration to your Optimized WordPress experience.

Reseller Migration

(Aluminum, Copper, Silver, Gold, Diamond)

Please fill out the Request Migration Form to initiate your website content migration. We can move the content and data for up to 30 websites/cPanels from another host.

VPS Migration

(Any VPS with a control panel)

Please fill out the Request Migration Form to initiate your website content migration.

VPS accounts with cPanel qualify for unlimited cPanel to cPanel migration or up to 90 manual migrations⤵ depending on the VPS plan.

Snappy 2000 - 50 manual migration
Snappy 4000 - 70 manual migration
Snappy 8000 - 90 manual migration

Plesk migration is all considered manual-style migration.

(VPS without a control panel)

VPS accounts with no control panel are for advanced Linux customers who are comfortable installing and configuring services. If you would like us to migrate data to such a VPS (or a Dedicated Server with no control panel), you would be responsible for making sure that the VPS services are configured correctly, as well as provide HostGator with instructions on exactly where the data needs to be placed. We will not configure or restore anything but only copy files or packages to the specified directory on the VPS/server. If you are uncomfortable installing and configuring services, we suggest upgrading to a Snappy 2000 plan with cPanel or Plesk.

Dedicated Migration

(Value, Power, Enterprise )

Please fill out the Request Migration Form to initiate your website content migration.

We provide unlimited cPanel transfers or up to 100 manual website migrations. The content migration is free within the first 30 days; we will reply with a price quote for any requests outside the first 30 days.

If the server is running cPanel and coming from another cPanel server, we offer unlimited full cPanel account migration.

Windows Shared Plans

(Personal, Enterprise)

Please fill out the Request Migration Form to initiate your website content migration. We can move your content and databases for one website or cPanel/Plesk Panel over from another host.

Migration quote

Even if you do not qualify for free migration from our Migrations team, you can still move your sites. To request a quote, please fill out the Request Migration Form o request a price quote.

Sites we cannot migrate

While HostGator has a well-trained and very experienced Migrations team, some sites cannot be moved due to technical limitations. Our current list of sites/hosts which we cannot migrate from is as follows:

VistaPrint
SMCing.com
Intuit
Wix
Website Tonight
Google Sites
Microsoft Office Live Small Business/Microsoft 365
MobileMe
Weebly
Website Builder

We also cannot migrate from hosts that do not allow access to your website files (typically by FTP) or databases or the data in those databases. Without access, we cannot copy and transfer your site.

Please see our list of shared hosts for a complete list of sites from which we can and cannot transfer.

Types of migrations

Three types of migration can occur when migrating your current hosting plan to a new hosting plan. Please refer to the sections below for a more detailed explanation of inter-server migration, intra-server migration, and manual migration.

Inter-Server Migration ⤵
Intra-Server Migration ⤵
Manual Migration ⤵
Lateral Migration (not available) ⤵
Site Clones (not available) ⤵

Inter-Server Migration

An Inter-server migration is a migration between two physical servers. Examples are moving from an old hosting account to a new account at HostGator; moving from a Shared to a Reseller account; moving from a Reseller to a VPS account; moving from a Shared, Reseller, or VPS to a Dedicated Server.

Examples of Inter-Server Migrations

The following examples illustrate some cases in which an inter-server migration will occur and reflect the cost or actions that may need to be taken.

Business Plan to Snappy 2000 VPS

Suppose you are moving from a Business account to a Snappy 2000 VPS with. If the destination account has been created within the past 30 days, the migration will be free; otherwise, you will be responsible for moving your data.

Snappy 8000 to Value Server Dedicated
Suppose you are moving from a Snappy 8000 to a Value Server Dedicated. If the destination account has been created within the past 30 days, the migration will be free; otherwise, you will be responsible for moving your data.

Intra-Server Migration

An intra-server migration is a migration between accounts on the same server. This includes upgrades such as a Baby to Business, Aluminum Reseller to Copper Reseller, and Snappy 2000 VPS to Snappy 2000 VPS. These are "in-place" upgrades in which no files are moved, and your account limits are raised.

Manual Migration

Manual migration includes most things that are not cPanel to cPanel migration. Additionally, this includes work such as splitting addon domains into cPanel accounts. A few examples are:

Migration from a host without cPanel
If moving from a Baby package to a Reseller
If moving addon domains into new cPanel sub-accounts
If moving the addon domain to another addon domain
If moving a cPanel account to an addon domain
Moving addon domain to the cPanel account and anything that cannot be packaged and restored without additional work.

Lateral Migration (Not available through the Migration team)

A lateral migration is when content is moved from one package to a different package of the same type on a different server, using the same domain name for both. Our Migrations department does not support this type of move. It will need to be done manually by the account owner.

Please note that any packages created for this type of migration will not be eligible for special promotions. This information can be found in our Terms of Service.

Site Clones (Not available through the Migration team)

Website clones are when a customer wants to move a website installation from one domain to another different domain, a subdomain, a subfolder, a temporary URL, or basically any move that is going to change the URL the website operates on. These are a whole different breed of migration altogether, and clone work is never free (even within 30 days). If you want to clone your website hosted with HostGator, you can Clone an Installation with Softaculous.

Currently, HostGator is not accepting new site clone requests.