Move Your cPanel Site from Another Host to GoDaddy
If you want to migrate your site hosted by another company to GoDaddy, you can use cPanel's backup features. This will move your website, its databases, as well as the email accounts you have set up on cPanel.
A quick note about email — if you follow these instructions, your email will continue working like it did before. However, if you change your domain's nameservers to point to our nameservers, it might stop your email from working.
Overview
Though this process has a number of steps, you can complete them in about an hour. Here's what to do:
- Download all of your backups from your current host.
- Restore those backups at GoDaddy.
- Preview your site on our servers.
- Make it live.
Backing up your site
Before you get started, we recommend purchasing and setting up your Web Hosting (cPanel) account with us. After you get that completed, start backing up your site at your current hosting provider.
To backup your cPanel account at your current host
- Sign in to your cPanel account.
- In the Files section, select Backup Wizard.
- Select Backup.
- Select Home Directory.
- Select Home Directory, and then select Go Back.
- Select MySQL Databases.
- Select each of your databases' names to download a backup of it, and then select Go Back.
- Select Email Forwarders & Filters.
- Select each of your domain names to download a backup of its forwarders, select System Filter Info, and then select Go Back.
Make sure you know where all of these files are stored so you can find them for the next step.
Restoring your site
Now that you have all of your backups, you can restore them on your GoDaddy Web Hosting (cPanel) account.
To Restore Your Backups
- Sign in to your GoDaddy account.
- Select Web Hosting.
- Next to the Web Hosting (cPanel) account you want to use, select Manage.
- Select cPanel Admin.
- In the Files section, select Backup Wizard.
- Select Restore.
- Select Home Directory.
- Select Choose File, select the Home Directory backup you generated at your current host, and then select Upload.
Note: This can take a while depending on the size of your backup.
- After the restore completes, close the new window that opened, and then select Go Back.
- Select MySQL Databases.
- Select Choose File, select the MySQL backup you generated at your current host, and then select Upload.
- Close the new window that opened, and repeat the previous step for each database you backed up. When you're done, select Go Back.
- Select Email Forwarders & Filters.
- Select Choose File, select the forwarders or filters backups you generated at your current host, and then select Upload.
That's it! You've successfully moved your website from your current host to us.
Previewing Your Site
To make sure everything works before moving your DNS, you can preview your site.
To Preview Your Site
- In cPanel, go to the cPanel tab at the top of the page.
- In the Domains section, select Preview Website.
- Next to the domain you're using, select Preview.
Some types of websites, including WordPress, will have issues with their CSS when you preview them. This is normal and, unfortunately, difficult to fix. However, when you're site's live, everything will function normally. If you want to get a more complete preview of your website, you can preview your website by editing your hosts file.
If everything looks fine, you can update your DNS at your domain registrar to point to your Web Hosting (cPanel). Just update your primary A record with your hosting account's IP.
Updating Your DNS
To find your hosting account's IP address, go to the cPanel tab at the top of the page. Your Websites IP Address displays on the left.
- If your domain name is registered with us, you can update your primary A Record (@) to your cPanel IP address in the DNS Manager (more info).
- If your domain name is registered elsewhere, contact your registrar for help updating your DNS.
