At some point, you may find that your current hosting company is simply not meeting your needs. Perhaps the customer service is severely lacking or the hosting company simply doesn’t offer enough storage or bandwidth for your company’s website. Maybe you found another company that is offering a much better deal, with more space, bandwidth and features. No matter what the reason for the change, you could be feeling a bit nervous about changing business web hosting companies. However, don’t let that keep you with a company that you simply don’t like. Below, you will find some tips to make the transition to a new host as painless as possible.
First of all, make sure you leave your account open with your current hosting company before changing hosting accounts. If you get mad at the company and close your account without any real plan, your website goes down. It is much better to evaluate the different business web hosting services and decide on the one that will meet your needs before you close your account. Once you make this determination, open an account with your new business web hosting company.
After you have decided which package is best and you have created an account, you need to download all the files from the old server and upload the files to your new server. This might sound like rather complicated, but it’s really not. The easiest way to do this is to connect to the old host’s FTP, then to your new host’s FTP, and then directly transfer the data. You’ll still need to make sure your old account is still active. Make sure you keep the same email addresses so you can continue to receive your email.
Next, make sure all of your files uploaded correctly to your new host. Check all the media files, web links, and such to ensure they are working properly. Once you’re sure that everything is in order, you can now change the domain name servers. You should have been given the domain name server when you set up your new account with the business web hosting provider.
The new hosting server should be up within about 24-48 hours. It is during this time that the true benefit of keeping your account active with the old hosting service is often realized. Instead of a customer seeing an error page during the change in server, they will see the website on the old server. Once the new server has taken over, you will be able to cancel your service with the old business web hosting company. It can be quite the easy transition.
Hopefully, you will have found a company that provides the services you need, including space, bandwidth, and technical support. If you are like most business owners, it’s simply not acceptable to get less than stellar service from any company. However, a poor web hosting company, with downtime and other problems, can quickly affect your company’s revenue. It is important to do your research ahead of time so you don’t have to change hosting companies again in the near future.