Migrating to Maxinames from Another Provider

Moving from another hosting provider to Maxinames is straightforward. Done well, your visitors notice nothing — your site stays online throughout. Here is the playbook.

1. Order your Maxinames hosting

Pick a plan and complete checkout. Do not change DNS yet — your old hosting keeps serving the site while you set up the new one.

2. Free white-glove migration

For most sites, our team handles the migration for you free of charge. Open a ticket in Support → Open Ticket, choose Migrations, and provide:

• Your old host's cPanel login (or FTP + database credentials).
• The domain you are migrating.
• Any special instructions (e.g. "test before going live").

We migrate, test, and tell you when it is ready for the DNS switch — usually within 24 hours.

3. Manual migration (if you prefer)

1. At your old host, generate a full cPanel backup (or back up the files and database separately).
2. Restore the backup at Maxinames via cPanel → Backup Wizard, or upload files via SFTP and import the database via phpMyAdmin.
3. Update database connection details in your application's config file (e.g. wp-config.php) to the new database name, user, password, and host.
4. Test the site using a temporary URL or a hosts-file override (point your local machine at the new server's IP without changing public DNS).

4. Lower your TTL

At least 24 hours before the DNS switch, lower the TTL on your A records and (if applicable) MX records to 300 seconds. This means the world will pick up the new IP within 5 minutes of the cutover, instead of waiting hours.

5. Cut over

1. Confirm your site works correctly on the new server.
2. Change your nameservers (or A record) to point at Maxinames.
3. Watch your traffic shift to the new server over the next hour or two.
4. Once you confirm everything is stable, cancel the old hosting plan.

6. Handle email separately if needed

If you are also moving email, do this carefully:

• Set up the same mailboxes on the Maxinames server before the cutover.
• After the cutover, re-import historical messages from the old mailboxes if needed.
• Update DNS MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to reflect the new mail server.

Need help? Contact us — migration is something we do every day.