Free WordPress Migration: What Most Irish Business Owners Do Not Realise It Includes

The renewal emails started landing again this week. I was on a call with an accountancy firm in Limerick yesterday whose annual hosting bill had jumped from €159 to €418. Same plan. Same site. Different price.

That conversation goes the same way every year. The owner already knows the bill is unfair. What they have not worked out yet, and what most do not work out for at least another renewal cycle or two, is how easy the move actually is.

So let us talk about that. Free migration is one of those phrases hosting companies throw around, and most business owners I speak to have no real idea what it actually covers. Whether the move costs them anything. Whether their site goes offline. Whether their Google rankings survive. Whether the migration ends up costing more than the original bill they were trying to escape.

This article is for the owner-operator looking at a renewal price that does not match what they signed up for, wondering whether switching hosts is worth the disruption. The short answer is that it usually is. The longer answer covers what a proper migration involves, where it goes wrong, and what you should ask before any host claims they will move your site for free.

What Free Migration Actually Includes

Not all "free migration" offers are the same. Most hosts cover the WordPress core files, the database, themes, and plugins. The good ones also handle media files, email account data where the host runs email, redirects to preserve your search visibility, and SSL certificates on the new domain. The cheap ones leave most of those steps to you.

Here is what a properly scoped migration should cover, end to end:

Migration item	What it means in practice
Files and database	Every page, post, product, customer record, and order history copied across
Themes and plugins	Including licensed themes you have paid for and any custom code
Media library	All images, PDFs, video files, anything you have uploaded
Email accounts	If the host runs your email, mailboxes and existing messages are moved
301 redirects	Old URLs mapped one-to-one to new URLs to preserve search rankings
SSL certificate	New certificate issued and verified on the destination host
DNS and domain	Either the host updates DNS for you or guides you through the change
Verification	The new site tested page by page before the old site is switched off

That last row matters more than people realise. We have seen migrations completed where the new site loaded, the homepage looked right, but the checkout was broken because a payment gateway plugin had not transferred its API keys. The owner found out four days later when a customer rang to complain. Verification is the unglamorous part of migration. It is also the part that determines whether your business runs uninterrupted.

The Renewal Cycle That Pushes Most Migrations

Most owners do not decide to move hosts because they have been comparing features on a Saturday morning. They move because the renewal email arrives and the number is wrong.

How wrong? The major providers' own pricing pages tell the story. Bluehost's basic shared plan, according to its own published renewal price FAQ, jumps from $2.95 a month at sign-up to $10.99 on renewal, an increase of roughly 270%. GoDaddy's Economy plan doubles, from $5.99 to $11.99. SiteGround's GrowBig plan, the one many small WordPress sites run on, goes from around $5.95 a month to $19.95, which works out at roughly 235% more. These are not third-party estimates. They are the providers' own figures.

If you signed a year ago at the introductory rate, you are not getting a small bump. You are getting double, triple, sometimes quadruple. The renewal email is engineered to feel inevitable. It is not. The wider migration myths that keep Irish businesses stuck with bad hosting tend to compound the inertia, but the renewal cycle is the trigger that finally pushes most owners to act.

Here is the part no host wants to talk about. The owner who pays the increase usually says the same thing: "I just did not have time to move it." Three years later they are still on the same host, still paying inflated rates, and the cost of staying has quietly compounded into something larger than any single year would have cost.

We see this pattern repeat across the market. A typical case: a retailer in Galway who originally signed up for €99 a year is, four renewals later, paying €380. Over the four-year stretch the extra cost is the price of a website redesign they never got around to commissioning.

What Most Owners Quietly Worry About

When I ask owners on a call what is stopping them from switching, the same four worries come up.

Downtime. "Will my site be offline during the move?" In a properly managed migration, no. The new copy is built and tested in parallel. The site only switches when the new version is verified. The cutover itself takes minutes, and even those minutes happen quietly because DNS propagation is gradual rather than instant.

SEO loss. "Will Google forget about me?" Not if redirects are handled correctly. Google's own documentation on site moves, published on developers.google.com, is unambiguous on this point. Permanent 301 redirects do not cause a loss of PageRank. The recommendation is to keep those redirects in place for at least 180 days while Googlebot reprocesses the change. Most managed migrations set this up automatically. Most DIY migrations forget.

Lost data. "What about my customer database, my orders, my comments?" These move with the database file. The risk is not the move itself but the gap between the snapshot and the new site going live. If your shop takes orders during the migration window, those orders need to be reconciled. A good migration plan accounts for that. A bad one finds out about it from a confused customer.

Cost surprise. "Free" turning into "we could not migrate that part, here is an invoice for €450 to do it manually." Read what is included before you commit. If a host cannot tell you what is covered before they start, that is a warning sign. Web60's migration is scoped in writing before the work begins, so no invoices arrive after the fact.

What Goes Wrong When DIY Migration Is Attempted

A migration plugin downloaded on a Tuesday evening looks straightforward. The plugin exports the site, the new server imports it, the URL changes, and you flip DNS. Done.

It is rarely that clean.

Three years ago I talked a client into a "quick" weekend migration using a popular plugin. The export took longer than expected because the site had a few gigabytes of product images. The import partially failed because the destination server had a smaller upload size limit. We restarted twice. We finished on Sunday night. On Monday morning the contact form was silently not delivering, because the SMTP plugin's credentials had not transferred. By the time the owner noticed, four enquiry emails were lost. I should either have scoped that migration through a managed service or carved out a full week instead of a weekend. Lesson learned the hard way.

DIY migrations fail for predictable reasons:

• Server-level differences in PHP version, memory limit, or upload size break plugin imports halfway through
• Email-sending plugins lose their API credentials because those live outside the database
• Image URLs in the database point to the old domain, leading to broken images all over the site
• Redirects from the old domain to the new are forgotten entirely, which is the single biggest cause of post-migration ranking drops
• The DNS cutover is rushed, and the change goes live before the new site is fully verified

None of these are exotic problems. They are the standard set of issues a properly scoped migration plans for in advance.

How a Proper Managed Migration Works in Practice

Here is what should happen, in order, when a host migrates your site properly.

First, an inventory. Before any files are moved, the migration team should know what they are dealing with. The current hosting setup, the WordPress version, the active plugins and themes, the size of the database, the size of the media library, whether email is hosted on the same provider, whether the SSL certificate is one they need to reissue or one they can carry across. Skip the inventory and the migration will hit a wall it could have planned for. A useful real example: one owner who moved from shared hosting to managed WordPress noticed within a week that the issues she had blamed on her site were actually issues caused by the host she had left.

Second, a staging copy. The new site is built on the destination host without touching the live one. Files and database move across. The host updates the database to reflect the new URL where needed. Plugins and themes are activated. The staging environment is checked against production, page by page.

Third, verification. This is where the unglamorous work happens. Every page renders. The contact form sends. The shop checkout completes. The booking form fires the right confirmation email. The admin login works. The Google Analytics tag fires. The SSL certificate is valid. If any of those fail on staging, they get fixed before the cutover.

Fourth, cutover. DNS is updated to point at the new host. Old URLs redirect to new ones. The old site is not deleted yet; it stays in place for a few days as a fallback. The new site is monitored for crawl errors, broken links, or unexpected traffic patterns.

Fifth, post-migration monitoring. For at least two weeks the team watches Search Console for crawl errors, ranking shifts, and traffic anomalies. Google's documentation recommends a temporary increase in crawl rate immediately after a migration as the search engine reprocesses the site, and your new host needs to handle that without slowing down. On the Web60 stack of Nginx, Redis object caching, and FastCGI page caching, the spike in crawl traffic is absorbed without the site slowing for actual customers trying to make a booking or check out.

That is what €60 a year, everything included, actually buys when you switch to Web60. The migration itself is part of the deal, not a bolt-on. For owners ready to begin, starting with an all-inclusive Web60 plan is the next step.

A Pre-Migration Checklist: Five Steps Before You Click Switch

Use this before you commit to any migration, free or otherwise.

1. Verify what is covered. Confirm in writing whether the migration includes email, redirects, SSL, custom plugins, and a verification pass. If it does not, ask what those items would cost separately.
2. Snapshot your current site. Take a full manual backup before any host touches your files. This is your insurance if something goes badly wrong during the move.
3. Document your dependencies. List every plugin, every theme licence, every third-party service (payment gateways, mailing lists, booking systems) that connects to your site.
4. Choose your cutover window. Pick a quiet trading period for the DNS switch. For most businesses that is mid-week, mid-morning, not Friday afternoon and not a Bank Holiday weekend.
5. Verify before you trust. After the new site is live, click through your top ten pages, complete a test order, send a test enquiry, and check Google Search Console for crawl errors before the old site is retired.

A migration done in this order is uneventful. A migration done in any other order is the story everyone tells about why they will never switch hosts again.

When Free Migration Is Not the Right Move

Strategic concession time. Free managed migration is not always the best fit.

If you are running a heavily customised WordPress installation with bespoke code, custom integrations into a CRM or ERP, and a developer who already knows the setup intimately, paying that developer to handle the migration is usually a better idea than handing it to a host's migration team. They will spot edge cases faster, and the brief is already in their head. The same logic applies to large multisite networks with custom domain mapping, or to sites with extensive headless WordPress front ends.

For a standard business website, brochure, shop, or booking site, the host's free migration is the right call. For an unusually complex setup, scope it with the developer who already maintains it.

The honest answer is to know which one you are. Most business websites are the first kind. The complexity comes from being on the wrong host, not from the site itself.

One Honest Limitation

Free migration does not cover ongoing maintenance after the move. The migration ends when the new site is verified and the redirects are in place. From that point, plugin updates, content changes, and security monitoring are part of the standard managed hosting service that follows. A migration is a one-time job. The host that takes over afterwards is a relationship.

If your old host was the one quietly handling those things, make sure your new host does too. On Web60 those tasks are included in the €60 annual fee. On a budget shared host advertising "free migration," they often are not. Read what is included after the move, not just what is included in the move itself.

Conclusion

Most owners do not move hosts because moving feels harder than staying. The renewal email lands, the price is uncomfortable, the diary is already full, and the move gets pushed to next quarter. Next quarter never comes. Three or four cycles later, the original saving has become a recurring overpayment that funds someone else's marketing budget.

The fix is not complicated. A free migration, done properly, takes a few days of scoped work that you mostly do not see. Verification is what makes the difference between an uneventful move and a story you will tell for a year. Ask what is covered, ask what is verified, and pick the host that gives you a straight answer.

The renewal email arrives once a year. The next one is probably already in your inbox.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a free WordPress migration usually take?

A standard small business website is typically completed within one to three business days, depending on site size and how busy the migration queue is. The actual cutover, the moment your domain switches over to the new host, takes minutes. The rest is preparation and verification.

Will my website be offline during the migration?

In a properly managed migration, no. The new copy is built and verified in parallel before the cutover. DNS propagation is gradual, so even during the switch most visitors continue reaching either the old or the new version without seeing an error page.

What happens to my Google rankings during the move?

Properly implemented permanent 301 redirects from old URLs to new ones preserve search authority. Google's own guidance, published on developers.google.com, confirms that permanent redirects do not cause a loss of PageRank. The redirects should remain in place for at least 180 days.

Does free migration include moving my email accounts?

It depends on the host. If your existing host runs your email service, the migration should include mailbox and message transfer. If your email is on a separate provider such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, no migration is needed for email itself, though MX records may need updating.

Can I migrate a WooCommerce store without losing customer or order data?

Yes. The WordPress database carries customer records, order history, and product data. The risk is orders placed during the migration window, which need to be reconciled manually. A good migration plan schedules the cutover for a quiet trading period precisely to minimise that gap.

What if something breaks after the migration?

A properly managed migration includes a post-migration monitoring window. If issues surface, the host's team should resolve them quickly. The old site is also typically kept available as a fallback for a few days after cutover, giving you a safety net while the new version stabilises.

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