Migrating an account from another web host

This article describes how to migrate data from another web hosting provider to your A2 Hosting account. When you migrate from another hosting provider, we recommend that you leave plenty of overlap time (no less than 7 days) between opening your A2 Hosting account and closing your previous account. Doing so helps ensure that your web site's downtime is minimal during migration.

Our migrations are processed in the order which they have been received. The majority of our migrations are completed within 24-48 hours. In some cases, more complex migrations might take longer.

cPanel migration

If your current web hosting provider uses cPanel, we can migrate your existing site for you by doing an account transfer. Account transfers are available for the following types of accounts:

• Shared hosting accounts.
• Reseller hosting accounts.
• Managed WordPress hosting accounts.
  WordPress sites are included with migrations to Managed WordPress hosting accounts. Your WordPress sites appear automatically in cPanel's WordPress Toolkit for quick and easy site management.
• Managed VPS accounts.
• Managed Dedicated Server accounts.

To transfer your account, follow these steps:

1. If you have not already done so, sign up for your A2 Hosting account.
   We recommend you provide an e-mail address that does not belong to the domain that you want to migrate. This minimizes the possibility of messages getting lost during the migration.
2. Log in to the Customer Portal.
   If you do not know how to log in to the Customer Portal, please see this article.
3. On the menu bar, click Support, and then click MIGRATIONS. The My Migrations Tickets page appears.
4. Click Request a Migration.
5. On the Request Migration page, read the preliminary information. Select the check boxes to agree to the Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy, then click Continue to Step 2.
6. In the Choose Service list box, select the service to which you want to migrate content, and then click Continue to Step 3.
7. Complete the requested information in the form, and then click Submit Migration Request.
   Please let us know if your databases contain views, functions, or stored procedures. The cPanel migration procedure does not migrate these items, so we must migrate them manually.
8. We will notify you when the account transfer is complete.
9. Test your web site on the A2 Hosting server before you change the domain's name server settings. To do this, you can use the shared URL for your account provided in the A2 Hosting Customer Portal at https://my.a2hosting.com, or you can use a custom hosts file. For more information about how to do this, please see this article.
10. Change your domain's name server settings to use A2 Hosting name servers. For more information about how to do this, please see this article.
11. Wait 48 hours for DNS propagation to complete.
12. After you verify that the web site on the A2 Hosting server is accessible and working correctly, you can cancel your account with the other hosting provider.

Manual migration

If your current hosting provider does not support cPanel, you can migrate your data manually. To do this, follow these steps:

1. If you have not already done so, sign up for your A2 Hosting account.
   When you sign up with A2 Hosting, we recommend you provide an e-mail address that does not belong to the domain that you want to migrate. This minimizes the possibility of messages getting lost during the migration.
2. Migrate your files, e-mail accounts, and databases to your A2 Hosting account:
   • Your web site files should go in the public_html directory of your A2 Hosting account. For information about how to use FTP to transfer files, please see this article.
   • For information about how to migrate e-mail accounts and data to your A2 Hosting account, please see this article.
   • For information about how to export and import MySQL databases, please see this article.
   • For information about how to export and import PostgreSQL databases, please see this article.
3. Test your web site on the A2 Hosting server before you change the domain's name server settings. To do this, you can use the shared URL for your account provided in the A2 Hosting Customer Portal at https://my.a2hosting.com, or you can use a custom hosts file. For more information about how to do this, please see this article.
4. Change your domain's name server settings to use A2 Hosting name servers. For more information about how to do this, please see this article.
5. Wait 48 hours for DNS propagation to complete.
6. After you verify that the web site on the A2 Hosting server is accessible and working correctly, you can cancel your account with the other hosting provider.