How to Migrate Hosting from Godaddy to Cloudways
Why migrate from GoDaddy to Cloudways?
I used GoDaddy hosting for years and this was mainly because Godaddy is where I registered my first domain name. This was about 10 years ago and I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing or what website hosting even was. In the end, Godaddy served it’s purpose and is not a terrible option for beginners and they do actually offer decent customer support.
But once my sites started getting bigger and more complicated, GoDaddy’s Shared Servers just weren’t able to handle the work load. Using WordPress and Woocommerce really slowed down my sites and after spending hours trying to optimize them and speed them up, I realized that the one thing I could never optimize was the server response time. This is determined solely by your hosting provider and GoDaddy has shared hosting with many other sites on the same server which ultimately slows down your site.
Here’s a comparison of the response times of my site with Godaddy and Cloudways. You can see that the files are the same size and it takes Godaddy almost .7 seconds to respond while it takes Cloudways about .2 seconds. .5 seconds might not seem like a lot of time but it can really make a difference when users are on your site.
After spending days trying to optimize my site and speaking to experts, I was led to Cloudways which uses Digital Ocean Servers.
I switched over to their servers with a 7 day free trial and tested out the speeds once I migrated my site. My site was instantly with their plan that cost $22.00/month and I was paying $49.99/month.
Click Here for a Free Cloudways Trial and Free Migration
The largest improvement was actually on the backend. Using Godaddy and WordPress made adding pictures and modifying products/posts a tedious experience where I could only do one thing at a time while I waited for the site to respond. Switching to Cloudways made a huge difference and now I can edit and optimize my site at my speed instead of waiting for Godaddy’s servers to respond to my requests.
In short, Cloudways is cheaper and faster.
But you don’t have to just take my word for it, you can try out their servers for free for 7 days to test it out for yourself.
How to Migrate Hosting from Godaddy to Cloudways
The first thing to do is go to Cloudways and use the free demo server (Free 7 Day Trial). No credit card required.
Verify the email that they send you.
At Cloudways, click on Add Server and pick your Application type (website); WordPress, WordPress/Woocommerce, Majento etc.
Name your website and server.
Pick your server – Digital Ocean
Pick your server size, you can start at $10.00 or $22.00/month with no contract and you can add multiple websites(applications) to the server.
Pick the server location that is closest to your audience or customers.
Click Launch Now!
Now Your Free 7 Day Trial Server Has Been Launched!
It’s time to migrate your site to Cloudways:
Your server will take about 7 minutes to launch.
Once it has launched, click on Applications and then Add Application (applications are basically just websites).
*Launching the application takes about 2 minutes
Log into Your WordPress Site:
While the application is being added, log into your wordpress site /wp-admin/ and install the Cloudways WordPress Migrator Plug-in
Back to Cloudways:
Once your application (website) has launched, you will see your access details:
Put these details into the Cloudways WordPress Migrator Plug-in
Your destination URL is the one on the new Cloudways Server and will be something like this:
wordpress-4323579-176454.cloudwaysapps.com
Create your application credentials for SFTP on Cloudways and use that for the SFTP Username and Password.
Start Migrating
Once all your data is in, click on Migrate.
*Don’t worry, your original site is still live in the original location, this is moving a copy of your site to the Cloudways server.
Migrating takes up to 4 hours and you can close the window without interrupting the process. They will email you when it has finished and this will not affect your current site.
Once the Migration is Complete, Test your website with Cloudways Hosting:
Now you have a version of your site on the Cloudways servers. You can test out the speed and log into wordpress and see if you notice a speed difference.
Your site is still with your old hosting provider so if you want to continue with the migration, now it’s time to point your url (domain name) to your Cloudways server.
How to point your url to your Cloudways server:
First go to Cloudways – Domain Management – add primary domain – input your website url.
Change A (IP Address) Records:
First, access your Cloudways Account to get your New IP Address. This is the same Public IP Address that we used for the Migrator Plug-in.
Now in Godaddy, click on Domains and then DNS Management.
Change the IP Address in the A Records to your NEW Cloudways IP Address.
The process is the same for any domain registrar, here’s an example of Name Cheap A Records:
Go to Domain List, Advanced DNS and Input Your New Cloudways IP Address:
Now Your Site is Pointing to Cloudways Hosting!
You will need to wait for the new changes to take effect and this process can take upto 24 hours but will usually start working in just a few hours.
Go to https://www.whatsmydns.net/ to make sure the new Cloudways IP Address is listed.
**This usually takes a few hours so don’t panick if it isn’t showing right away**