Website Migration
How to move your business website to a new provider
Changing website providers should be a controlled handoff, not a restart. Preserve what works, prepare and test the destination first, and switch your domain only when the new site is ready.
Businesses change website providers because of rising costs, limited tools, slow support, platform restrictions, or simply wanting more control. What often delays the decision is the fear that leaving means losing the website the business already paid for. It does not always have to.
The guiding rule
Build the destination before you leave the old one.
Keep the current website online while the replacement is prepared. Your domain should be one of the last things you switch, not the first.
1. Find out what your business controls.
Confirm access to the domain registrar and DNS, website platform or hosting, business email records, Google Search Console, analytics, original images and logos, written content, forms, and third-party services. If you are unsure what belongs to you versus your provider, start with our website ownership guide. Review your agreement for custom code and licensed creative assets too.
2. Inventory the existing website.
Record current pages and URLs, important landing pages, blog posts, images, downloads, navigation, forms, metadata, and pages receiving search traffic. This becomes the migration checklist. A page can look fine after a move and still lose value if its old URL returns a 404 or important content and SEO signals disappear.
3. Decide what actually needs to change.
Moving and redesigning are separate decisions. If the current site still works, preserving it may be the fastest and least disruptive choice. If it needs refinement, migration can include targeted improvements. A redesign makes sense when the structure, messaging, or experience truly needs one. Our website migration guide explains this distinction.
4. Build the new version away from the live domain.
Use a staging address or preview environment so the new site can be reviewed without replacing the current one. This gives you time to catch missing pages, images, links, and functionality. For sites that are difficult to export, Panderr, the migration platform developed by PeachSites, can help preserve or redesign an existing site into a more portable website structure.
5. Preserve URLs when practical.
If an important page already has a useful URL, keeping the same path avoids an unnecessary change. When a URL must change, create a permanent redirect from the old address to the most relevant new page. Do not redirect unrelated retired pages to the homepage merely to avoid a 404.
6. Check SEO before launch.
Review titles, meta descriptions, headings, canonical URLs, indexability, internal links, images, structured data where appropriate, robots.txt, and the XML sitemap. Make sure temporary staging directives do not carry into production. Keep Search Console and analytics under business-controlled accounts.
7. Test it like a customer.
Click navigation on desktop and mobile. Submit forms. Test phone and email links, downloads, images, important URLs, and the 404 page. Test ecommerce, scheduling, payments, memberships, or other special workflows separately. The goal is not merely that the homepage loads; the business website needs to work as a system.
8. Switch the domain after the new site passes review.
Connect the production domain only when the replacement is ready. Preserve DNS records unrelated to the website, especially business email and third-party services. Keep the old environment temporarily when possible so you have a rollback window.
9. Audit the live site immediately.
Review production URLs again after launch. Check redirects, 404s, canonicals, sitemap URLs, robots directives, titles, forms, analytics, and both www and non-www behavior. Production is what ultimately matters.
10. Tell Google about the finished migration.
Confirm the production sitemap in Google Search Console and inspect important URLs. Request indexing where useful, then watch indexing and performance reports for unexpected exclusions, redirect problems, or old URLs Google continues to discover. Migration is not finished the instant DNS changes.
A provider change should give your business more choice, not force a restart.
The safest moves are methodical: inventory, preserve, build, test, switch, verify. PeachSites can help determine whether an existing site can be preserved, improved, or should be redesigned before anything is disconnected.