Website & Hosting Migration Without Downtime or SEO Loss

// Who needs website migration services?

Website migration services are for businesses that have outgrown their server or their hosting provider. The move itself carries risk: lost emails, broken forms and falling rankings usually come from unplanned migrations. If one of these sounds familiar, it is time for a planned move.

• Server response time (TTFB) is consistently above 0.8 seconds, and the site slows down or drops at peak times
• Your host offers little support and you cannot upgrade PHP or Node.js
• You are moving from shared hosting to a VPS, or to a data centre closer to your customers
• Your domain is moving to another registrar, or to a new domain after a rebrand
• You have parted ways with the agency or developer who built the site and want the accounts in your own name

A server move, a domain transfer and a URL change are separate jobs; to keep the risks apart, we usually schedule them as separate steps.

// What does a website migration include?

A migration covers every component the site needs to run, not just its files. The table shows what a standard migration includes and excludes, so the boundaries are clear before you accept a quote.

// How does a domain transfer work, and will my site go offline?

A domain transfer changes the registrar that manages your domain; done properly, neither the website nor email goes offline, because the transfer does not change where the domain points (its DNS). For generic domains (.com, .net, .org) the process follows ICANN rules:

• The transfer lock is removed in your current registrar's control panel
• An authorisation code (EPP or auth code) is requested and entered at the new registrar
• The registrant approves the request by email; the transfer usually completes within 5 to 7 days
• A newly registered or recently transferred domain cannot be transferred again until 60 days have passed

Country-code domains follow their own registry rules. A .uk domain, for example, has no auth code and is moved by changing its IPS tag at Nominet. We confirm the current rules before starting and never leave a transfer to the week before expiry.

On a server move, the critical moment is the DNS cutover. We lower record TTLs to 300 seconds 24 to 48 hours beforehand, so the new address propagates within minutes and fewer visitors are left on cached records. MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are listed before the move and recreated exactly. If mailboxes are moving too, both servers are checked during the cutover window so no message falls through the gap.

// How does the migration process work, and how long does it take?

The process has four steps and takes 2 to 4 working days for a typical site; a domain transfer, if needed, runs in parallel. The site is first tested on the new server at a temporary address, then switched over at a low-traffic hour. A full backup is taken beforehand and the old server stays live until the 7-day monitoring period ends, so if anything goes wrong, pointing DNS back takes minutes.

// How do you migrate a website without losing SEO?

If URLs stay the same, a server move on its own does not affect rankings; the risk starts when the URL structure or the domain changes. In that case every old URL is redirected one by one to its new equivalent with a 301; pointing everything at the homepage throws away the value of the pages that rank. If the domain changes, we notify Google through the Change of Address tool in Search Console and submit the new sitemap.

The map is built from crawled URLs, pages with Search Console traffic and URLs with external links. Google's guide to site moves with URL changes recommends keeping redirects in place for at least a year, so we advise renewing the old domain for at least that long. Crawling and indexing issues that surface during a move are handled under technical SEO.

Multilingual sites add another layer: language URLs and hreflang tags depend on one another, so one broken link breaks the pairing for every language. Two of our projects illustrate this:

• Gint Clinic — a premium corporate site we built in three languages (TR/EN/DE). When a three-language site moves, its language URLs are kept one to one and the hreflang pairing is re-verified after cutover
• GNR Ästhetik — a German-language WordPress site we built for an aesthetics clinic based in Germany. For sites serving visitors abroad, server location is part of the plan, for speed and for data protection rules such as GDPR

A migration is not judged on cutover day; it is judged by the 404 logs, email delivery and Search Console data in the days that follow.

// Which platforms do you migrate?

Our migration service is platform-independent: if we can get server access, we can move it. Each stack has different moving parts:

• Custom PHP applications — PHP version compatibility, configuration files, cron jobs and file permissions
• Node.js / Next.js applications — deployment to a VPS or PaaS, environment variables, process manager and build steps
• Static HTML sites — file transfer, redirect rules and cache headers
• REST API integrations — IP-restricted services, webhook endpoints and payment provider callback URLs

If your site runs on WordPress, see WordPress migration for the plugin, theme and WooCommerce-specific steps. On closed platforms such as Wix, Shopify and Squarespace there is no server access, so what we can do is limited: we can move the domain and DNS, but the site cannot be exported as files that run on another server. Leaving these platforms usually means rebuilding the site, in which case website redesign is the better starting point.

// What determines the cost of a website migration?

Four variables set the price: the platform and data size, the number of email accounts and mailbox contents, whether URLs or the domain change, and the number of integrations. A static brochure site on the same domain is a very different workload from a multilingual site moving to a new domain with a full 301 map, so we quote from a review, not a price list.

The pre-migration review is free; the quote is fixed after the review and does not go up later. If the review shows that slowness comes from the pages rather than the server, we say so plainly and suggest website speed optimisation as a separate step.

// Who does the work, and when is a migration unnecessary?

Migrations are led by Caner Zep Çelik, Founder & Technical Consultant at Zep Bilişim. Since 2020 he has worked on server configuration, DNS and multilingual infrastructure across more than 100 projects in the UK, Turkey and Germany. He carries out the review, the DNS cutover and the redirect map himself and does not subcontract the work.

Migration does not fix every kind of slowness. If the problem lies in the code, heavy images or plugin load, a new server will not close the gap; we measure this during the review and do not recommend a move you do not need. A higher plan with your current host, or a PHP update, is often enough. If you only want your domain at a different registrar, it can be transferred without touching the server at all.

// Frequently Asked Questions