How to Transfer Cheap Hosting Providers

You must take a number of preparatory steps before transferring from one cheap hosting provider to another. Do not cancel your service with your current cheap hosting provider until you have completed the move to your new one and confirmed that your website is live on the servers of the new cheap hosting business. If — God forbid — any problems develop during the transfer and you’ve already canceled your current inexpensive hosting service, visitors to your site will discover it “temporarily” down, which is a monumental webmastering faux pas.

Here’s one more tip to avoid as you begin the transfer process: Do nothing until you have created a backup of your complete website. This is likely the most crucial phase in the process, and one that is painfully neglected far too frequently. Backup each and every page, image, and hyperlink. If you’ve never conducted a backup of your website before, it’s simple — simply use your preferred FTP tool (any will do) and download all of the data from your current inexpensive hosting provider.

Once this crucial step has been completed, it is time to begin searching for a cheap hosting company to transfer to. Perhaps you already have one in mind. If not, there are countless inexpensive hosting portals and review sites whose primary purpose is to assist you in navigating the crowded environment of cheap hosting companies.

Determine beforehand why you desire to transfer inexpensive web hosting firms — is it cost? Bandwidth? System interoperability? Customer service? Features? Plugins? Scripts? Once you’ve discovered the specific areas in which your current cheap hosting service falls short, you’ll have a lot easier time comparing the various cheap hosting options available to find the one that will suit you best.

Do not make any hasty decisions here. The last thing you want to do is go from one cheap hosting company to another; if you do, transferring will be the only administrative task that consumes your time. Take the time now to get the finest bargain available; the competition in this market is fierce, and you should have no trouble locating all the services and features you require at a steep discount. Do not settle, for the same reason. If you can’t find a cheap web hosting service that offers everything you’re searching for, keep looking — certainly at least one does.

Once you’ve chosen a new inexpensive hosting provider for your website, you’ll need to record the following details:

Your domain name (for example, “thebestwebsiteever.com”) The name of the organization where your domain is registered — If applicable, the username and password for your domain name registration — The name server information of your soon-to-be new cheap hosting provider (this will likely be emailed to you when you sign up with them; if not, or if you lost it, you can find it in the Help documentation on the new cheap hosting provider’s site).

Now that you have completed all of these steps, you are finally set to switch from your old inexpensive hosting provider to the new one. To do so:

• Sign in to the website where you presently have your domain name registered;
• Locate a link for Domain Name Servers or DNS Information;
• Modify the information in these fields to reflect that of your new inexpensive hosting provider;
• Submit the adjustments.

And voilà! You’ve done it! Was it not so?

After completing the preceding stages, it is time to publish your website online. Simply upload the files that you backed up at the beginning of this process to your new inexpensive web server. Then, visit your site (ideally from several browsers) to confirm that it still appears as desired now that it is hosted on your new inexpensive hosting provider’s servers. If you detect an issue with the appearance of your website, it’s essential to revisit the HTML code and determine what’s causing the mismatch. It is possible that a section of the code did not transfer correctly. If this is the case, simply reenter the information as it should be, and the issue should be resolved.

Finally, after you are convinced that your website is live and appears as expected across all browsers, it is time to discontinue your previous inexpensive hosting plan.