Move your website to Windows hosting: backup restore and live migration

The Migration & Restore tab on your service page moves a website to your Windows hosting on your own, without a ticket. Choose one of three ways, depending on what you have.

Restore a backup file

1. Upload the backup with File Manager, for example into private/migrate. A cPanel full backup is named backup-*.tar.gz or cpmove-*.tar.gz; a Plesk backup is a .tar or .zip, split volumes too.
2. Open Migration & Restore and select Choose Backup File on the From A Backup card.
3. Pick the file. When the backup has been read, select Choose And Move in its row and choose what to bring over.

Large uploads are easier with Disk Access.

Fetch a backup from a web address

1. Select Download Backup on the From A Web Address card.
2. Enter the address of the backup file. Our server downloads it straight into private/migrate.
3. Select Choose And Move in its row and choose what to bring over.

The address must be reachable from the internet: addresses inside private networks are refused.

Copy a running server live

From A Running Server copies a site from any Linux server (with cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin or no panel) or from a Windows server with IIS.

1. Select Connect To Server. Under files, choose the connection (SSH, FTPS or FTP), enter the server name, port and user name, and sign in with a password or a private key. Under mail (IMAP), enter the mail server and its security (SSL/TLS on 993 or STARTTLS on 143). When you connect, the panel finds the databases over the same SSH connection or directly and lists them for you to choose.
2. Let the first copy run, then check the site on your new hosting.
3. While you keep working on the old server, select Sync Again as often as you need to bring over the latest changes.
4. When everything is in place, point your domain to your new hosting. See first steps on Windows hosting.

Verify: your site, its databases and its mailboxes appear on your service page, and the site opens at your domain once it points to us.

After the move

• Give mailbox users their new passwords: mailboxes from a cPanel backup get new ones.
• Each site keeps its PHP version and its www preference. A site on a PHP version below 8.3 moves to 8.3, and the move report says so.
• Plesk domain aliases come along, and cPanel forwarders without a mailbox become forwarding addresses.
• Your .htaccess files, redirects included, are converted to IIS rules automatically, without loops against the HTTPS and www rules of your hosting. Check the pages that depend on rewrites.
• Delete the backup archive from private/migrate to free your disk space.

Troubleshooting

The web address is refused. It must be a public address on the internet: an address inside a private network cannot be downloaded.

The backup does not fit. The archive counts against your plan's disk space. Delete old files, or move up to a larger plan.

Next steps

• Back up the moved site: backup and restore on Windows hosting.
• Check databases: databases on Windows hosting.
• Mail settings: mail on Windows hosting.