Web hosting free migrations: who owns the move before you buy

Free site migration sounds like the host will pick up your whole site and put it down somewhere safe. A lot of the time they move files and leave the hard parts with you. Before you buy on that promise, find out who owns the move when something breaks.

Hosts put "free migration" next to the price for a reason. Review sites repeat it. Shoppers treat it as proof switching will be painless. The offer is only useful if you know what gets moved, who changes DNS, what happens when email or a plugin breaks, and whether anyone stays on the ticket until the site works on the new account. If you are already comparing hosts without leaning on top 10 roundups, pair this with how to choose web hosting without relying on top 10 lists and backup restores. For why sales copy and review copy so often rhyme, read The Truth About Hosting Review Sites.

Free migration is not the same as a full handoff

A full handoff usually means someone copies the site, checks it on the new servers, helps with DNS, and stays until the public URL loads cleanly. A free migration often means a one-way file and database copy into your new account, then a polite note that DNS is your job.

That difference matters:

With a handoff, you have a named owner when the site looks wrong after the switch.
With a file copy, you may still own DNS, email, SSL, cron jobs, and the debugging when WordPress plugins expect paths that no longer exist.

If a sales page says "we will migrate you for free" but support will not say who owns DNS or a broken checkout after cutover, you are buying a copy job, not a move.

Ask who owns each part of the move

Before you buy, send the same short question to every host on your shortlist:

On this plan, what does free migration include? Files, databases, email, DNS, SSL, cron jobs, redirects? Do you change nameservers or A records for me, or do I? If the site fails after cutover, who owns the ticket until it works, and for how many days?

Save the reply. "Yes we migrate free" without those details is a badge, not a plan.

Push on the boring edges:

Is the offer limited to one site, one CMS, or "simple" WordPress only?
Do they migrate email mailboxes, or only the website?
Do they keep the old host online in parallel while DNS propagates, or do they expect you to flip and hope?
Will they restore from a backup you supply if their copy is incomplete?
Is staging included so you can check the site before the public DNS change?

A free migration that copies HTML but leaves mail, SSL, and redirects to you can still cost a weekend.

Your backups still matter more than their script

Even a careful migration team is copying from somewhere. If that somewhere is a half-broken account, or a backup nobody has restored in months, the new host inherits the mess.

Before you start any migration:

Take your own full backup of files and databases, and confirm you can unpack it somewhere else
Export critical content (posts, products, media) so you are not trapped if the ticket stalls
Note PHP version, required extensions, and any custom server rules the old host set for you

Same honesty test we use for backup restores and support quality: a migration promise without a recoverable copy of your own is incomplete. If you need the DIY sequence later, how to transfer to a new web host is still the practical outline. The point of asking now is to learn whether the new host will share the work, not to discover mid-outage that they will not.

DNS, email, and SSL are where "free" gets expensive

The website files are the easy half. The parts that make the site reachable and usable are where ownership fights start.

Think through cutover before you pay:

Who edits nameservers or A records, and who watches propagation?
Do MX records stay put, or does mail move with the host?
Who issues or reissues the certificate after the hostname points at the new IP?
Are there hard-coded old URLs, CDN origins, or webhook endpoints that still point at the previous server?

If the host will not touch DNS, that can still be fine when they say so clearly and give you the exact records to set. It is less fine when marketing implies a turnkey move and chat later says DNS is "outside migration scope."

Red flags worth pausing on

Be careful when:

Free migration is on the sales page but missing from the terms, or limited to "best effort" with no owner after copy
Support will not put scope and post-cutover ownership in writing before you pay
Email, SSL, and DNS are excluded without that being obvious in the offer
They refuse a staging check and want DNS flipped on first contact
The only path after failure is a generic ticket queue with no migration specialist
Reviews praise "free migration" but never say whether the site actually worked afterward

Useful hosts make migrations boring and owned. Useful reviews mention what was left for the customer. If neither does, you are reading advertising.

We care about this for the same reason we care about refund honesty and uptime honesty: the real product is a site that keeps working while you change homes, not a checkbox next to the price. Our FAQ on how we rank hosts prefers evidence over splash ratings, and a free migration you cannot define is just another sticker.

The best course of action is still the boring one. Shop around, ask the same ownership questions of every shortlisted host, and treat any free-migration claim that cannot survive a written reply as marketing until proven otherwise. Browse more web hosting guides and keep the homepage ranking list handy while you compare.