Outgrowing a host, chasing a better price, or simply switching providers is common — this lesson covers how to do it without the site or its email going down in the process.
| Migration | What actually moves |
|---|---|
| Domain transfer | Moving a domain's registration from one registrar to another — the domain itself does not change, only who you renew it through |
| Hosting migration | Moving a site's actual files and database to a new hosting provider — the domain can stay registered exactly where it is throughout |
These are independent — a domain can be registered with one company while hosting lives with a completely different one, exactly as established in the domain-hosting-email-are-separate lesson early in this category. Most moves only require one of the two, not both.
DNS propagation, covered earlier in this category, means a change is never instant across every visitor — pointing DNS at a new host before it is fully ready and tested guarantees some visitors see a broken site during that window. Keeping the old host live and untouched until the new one is confirmed working removes that risk entirely; the old copy is the fallback for the exact period propagation is unpredictable.
If email is hosted separately from the website (the common case, per the earlier email lesson), it is entirely unaffected by a hosting migration — only the A/CNAME records controlling the website change, not the MX records controlling mail. Email only needs attention here if the migration specifically involves switching email providers too, in which case it follows this same safe-order principle on its own MX records.