WordPress migration cost: which job you are being quoted for, and what moves the price

"Migration" names at least three different jobs, and the price follows the job. Moving the same WordPress site to another host is a copy. It is sold at a low fixed price, and the host you are moving to will often do it free. Changing the domain adds redirects and a notice to search engines. Changing platform, to WordPress or away from it, is a rebuild with the content brought across, and it is quoted.

So work out which job you have before you compare prices. This page states no company's price and ranks nobody.

The kinds of move

Two questions tell them apart. Will the site still be WordPress afterward, with the same theme and plugins? Will every page keep the address it has now? Yes to both is a move between hosts. Yes to the first alone is a change of domain. No to the first is a change of platform. If you do not know what a site runs on, the website platform detector reads it from outside.

One quote can hold two of these jobs, since a change of platform nearly always changes the addresses too. Ask for them as separate lines.

What a host's free migration covers

Many hosting companies will move a WordPress site onto their servers and charge nothing for it, because the move brings them the hosting. For a plain site it is often all you need, so check it first.

The rows are in alphabetical order. Each comes from the host's own page for its own service, as that page read in October 2026. Terms change, so read the page before you rely on it.

Read down the last column and the same lines come up again.

• It is a copy of a WordPress site, like for like. A host's free migration is never a change of platform.
• Email is not part of it. Bluehost, Hostinger and Kinsta each say so. Mail for a domain is delivered to wherever the domain's MX records point, so mailboxes kept at the old host are a job of their own.
• The DNS change and the checking are yours. The host hands over a copy at a temporary address. Kinsta's page says to verify your content, functionality and any store or membership features, and not to update the DNS until you have.
• Multisite is a special case. Four of the seven pages restrict it.
• A store needs a plan for its orders. Kinsta recommends maintenance mode for a store while it is copied, and says that in maintenance mode orders cannot be placed. WP Engine's guide for stores has you time a trial copy first, so that you know how long the freeze will last.

A paid move between hosts earns its fee by doing what the free one leaves out: checking the copy, making the DNS change, planning for the email, and timing a store's switch. Ask what a fixed price includes on those four lines.

What moves the price of a change of platform

A change of platform is quoted because nobody knows its size until someone has looked at the site. These are the things they count.

A quote given before anyone has asked about these is a guess. Have the counts ready.

What a quote should say

Hold any quote, for any of these jobs, against this list. The written answers are the scope.

• What moves and what is rebuilt. A list by kind of content: pages, posts, images, products, customers, orders, forms. Whatever is not on the list is not in the price.
• The redirect map, and who checks it. Who lists the old addresses, who decides where each one leads, and who tests them after the switch. Ask for permanent redirects: Google treats a 301 or a 308 as a signal that the new address replaces the old one. Its guidance is to keep them for as long as possible, generally at least a year.
• What is tested before the domain changes. Google's guidance is to test all aspects of how users interact with the site on the new copy first. Ask which forms are sent, whether a test order is placed, and who signs off.
• Who makes the DNS change, and who holds the login where the domain is managed. Google suggests lowering the record's time to live to a few hours at least a week before the move, so this person is named early.
• What happens to email. Whether mailboxes at the old host are moved, by whom, and whether the mail records are left untouched during the switch.
• How long the old site stays up. It is your way back. Google's guidance is to shut the old hosting down once traffic to it has reached zero. If the domain changed, Search Console's help recommends paying for the old domain for at least a year.
• What is fixed afterward at no charge, and for how long. A missed redirect, a form that stopped sending, a page that looks wrong on a phone.
• What would change the price, and whether you are asked before it does.

The website migration checklist has the order of work. A quote that follows it will already answer most of these lines.

The cost that is not on the quote

Three costs sit beside the fee. None appears on an invoice, and each can be larger than the fee.

Search traffic lost to missing redirects

Google's documentation says an address that is already in its index and starts answering with a 404 is removed from the index. Sending every old address to the home page does not save it: Google says that can be treated as a soft 404. Even a move done properly is felt for a while. Google says to expect ranking to fluctuate during a move, and that most pages of a small or medium-sized site take a few weeks to move.

To see what is at stake on your own site, open the Performance report in Search Console, which counts the clicks from Google's results. The pages with the most clicks are the ones a missing redirect costs you most. The redirect map builder turns a list of old and new addresses into redirect rules and points out chains, loops and duplicates.

Orders missed during a store's switch

An order placed on the old store after the last copy was taken is not in the new one. The usual answer is to stop orders for the final stretch. WP Engine's guide for stores says the site will need an amount of downtime to finalize the migration and update the DNS.

Put that window in your own figures: the orders you take in an hour, at the hour of the switch, times the hours it lasts. Ask anyone quoting when the window falls and how long they expect it to be.

Downtime

A site that takes no orders can move with little or no gap, because the old site serves visitors until the DNS is switched. Downtime comes from doing the work out of order: the DNS changed before the copy was tested, or the old hosting canceled while visitors and the mail still depended on it.

The downtime cost calculator works out what an outage costs in sales not made, from your own revenue and the hours involved. Run it for an outage of the length you could not afford, and hold each quote against the result.

What doing it yourself costs

No fee. It costs your hours, and the three costs above become yours to prevent.

• A move between hosts is the one most owners can do. The new host's plugin does the copying, and your hours go on what the host leaves to you: checking the copy, the DNS change and the email. The risk stays small while the old site is left untouched, because you can point the domain back at it.
• A new domain adds the risk in the database that WordPress's documentation warns about. How to change a WordPress URL covers replacing the stored address safely, and how to set up redirects covers the redirects.
• A change of platform is the large one. The guides for Wix to WordPress, Squarespace to WordPress and Shopify to WooCommerce show what each platform exports and what you would rebuild by hand. Read one through and count the steps that apply to you.

Before moving a store off WooCommerce at all, read when to switch to Shopify and when to stay. Some of the usual reasons for leaving can be fixed where you are.

Doing it yourself is a reasonable choice for a site with few pages, no store and few old addresses that get visits. With a store, subscriptions or more than one language, a mistake can cost more than the fee you saved.

How to work out your own figure