WPLift is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

10 Reasons to Consider Migrating Your WordPress Site

Last Updated on May 3rd, 2023

Although it doesn’t seem evident, changing a hosting provider can significantly impact your WordPress site’s performance. Reasons to consider migrating your WordPress site range from provider’s dated servers to slow page load speeds.

Whatever the reason for your site’s lackluster performance, you shouldn’t fear switching hosting providers.

Learning how to migrate your website to a new server isn’t difficult if you already recognize telltale signs that your current hosting provider can no longer accommodate your needs.

However, you shouldn’t hesitate to change hosting provider even if you don’t know how to migrate a WordPress site on your own because most WordPress hosting companies offer this service.

Let’s look at some factors you should consider before migrating your WordPress site to a different server.

Top 10 Reasons for WordPress Site Migration

1. Hosting Provider Uses Dated Hardware

The quality of the hosting provider’s equipment becomes more important as your website grows. HDD hard drives, slow bandwidth, or limited storage space are less likely to affect the site’s performance during the early development stages.

However, upgrading to a hosting service that utilizes SSD hard drives can be vital for a site experiencing a traffic spice because it will improve its loading speed due to faster data access.

A WordPress site needs at least 1GB of disc space to run normally, but your storage needs will increase as you keep publishing new content. So, if your current hosting plan prevents you from storing large files on the server, you should look for a replacement.

You should also consider changing the hosting service if the maximum bandwidth you can get without paying more is insufficient for your site’s daily traffic.

Article Continues Below

2. Low CPU and RAM Limits

While we’re on the topic of server hardware, we shouldn’t neglect server RAM and CPU limits. Your site’s RAM and CPU usage depends on its number of daily visitors.

Hence, you’ll hit your plan’s CPU and RAM limits if too many visitors request data from the site’s server in a single day.

Reaching these limits sporadically won’t significantly impact your site’s performance, but exceeding RAM and CPU limits can become problematic as your site’s traffic increases.

Migrating your WordPress website will prevent server shutdowns due to high CPU and RAM usage.

3. Slow Site Speed

The site’s load speed doesn’t depend only on the server hardware. Factors like geographic location and the number of server users also affect the time a web browser needs to display your site to a visitor.

Managed hosting plans, especially those aimed at novice WordPress users, involve sharing a server with other websites. As a result, your site’s speed might suffer, through no fault of your own, if other sites on the server you’re using have high traffic.

You’ll have to change the hosting provider if all other attempts to improve your site’s speed fail.

4. Maximizing the Site’s Uptime

Ideally, your WordPress site should be available to visitors at all times. However, none of the available WordPress hosting providers can or should promise you 100% of uptime.

Still, if your site is frequently unavailable due to server-related issues, you should look for a new hosting provider.

Power outages and bandwidth disconnection usually cause server downtime. A reliable hosting service has procedures in place that prevent accidents from affecting the uptime of their servers.

Article Continues Below

Frequent downtime issues can affect your site’s ranking in search engine results and user experience. Consequently, migrating to a new server can boost a website’s SERP ranking and help retain visitors.

5. Frequent Site Suspensions and Internal Server Errors

All hosting providers can suspend a WordPress site if they detect illegal activity such as black hat SEO or malware. Still, if your provider suspends your site without a good reason or prior notice, you should discuss the reasons for suspension with them.

Exceeding your hosting plan’s limits or accidentally violating a provider’s policy isn’t grounds for immediate account suspension, as you should at least be allowed to amend the issue.

Moreover, recurring internal server errors could indicate that the provider’s servers aren’t appropriately configured for WordPress. Both of these factors can be a sign that you need a new hosting provider.

6. Hosting Provider Can No Longer Accommodate Your Needs

The server you’re currently using can impede your site’s growth by capping the number of monthly visitors or preventing you from uploading streaming media to your site due to file size limits.

Most WordPress hosting providers offer multiple plans for websites of all sizes, but upgrading to a new plan can sometimes be more expensive than migrating to a new server.

In addition, the lack of scalability may prevent you from capturing new leads and keep your conversion rates relatively low.

Moving your WordPress site to a server that allows you to upload high amounts of video content and supports thousands of daily visitors can create room for unlimited growth.

7. Protecting Data You Store on the Site’s Server

WordPress hosting providers don’t always take all the measures they can to keep your website safe.

Moreover, some providers are frequently exposed to DDoS attacks as their servers are flooded with internet traffic that prevents the visitors of websites hosted on these servers from accessing them.

Article Continues Below

Installing a security plugin won’t protect the website data you keep on the server, and if a hacker reaches the provider’s servers, they’ll have access to all information about your website.

Switching to a hosting provider with a high level of security will minimize the risks of cyberattacks or data leaks on your website.

8. Lack of Access to Content Delivery Networks

The geographical location of the hosting provider’s servers may not be high on your priority list when searching for your site’s first server. However, it can affect your site’s performance, especially if the provider doesn’t address the latency issue caused by faulty hardware.

A Content Delivery Network is a system of strategically positioned servers, so when a visitor from a certain part of the world attempts to access your website, the information about the page they’re trying to view is retrieved from the closest server.

Some WordPress hosting providers don’t include CDNs in their offers. Switching to a provider that stores static versions of your site on a CDN can give you an advantage over your competitors. 

9. A Wider Range of Server Configuration Options

Plugins make adding new features to WordPress websites easy, but relying on them extensively can increase page load times and cause a myriad of compatibility issues.

The alternative is to use custom code to create the features you want your website to have, but you may not be able to do that if your hosting provider limits your server configuration options and doesn’t give you root access to your site.

Hosting providers use different control panels, which affects your server management options. Migrating to web hosting compatible with SPanel or cPanel might make its daily management easier.

10. Ineffectual Customer Service

Your web host should provide the assistance you need to solve all server-related issues. Unfortunately, some hosting providers don’t offer customer support around the clock and need a long time to respond to user queries.

What’s more, their staff often lacks the technical training and knowledge necessary to provide meaningful support to help you resolve the problem.

Switching to a web host with knowledgeable customer support will save you a lot of time as you won’t have to search for the solution to your problem alone.

Still, you should learn as much as possible about the provider’s customer service before moving your WordPress site to the web host’s server.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do All Providers Support Multi-Site Hosting?

Not all hosting providers offer this option. Moreover, the number of WordPress sites you can run from a single server depends on the hosting plan you choose.

Is the Lack of Automatic Backups a Reason to Change the Host Provider?

Automatic daily backups are a standard feature most WordPress hosting providers offer. However, if your web host doesn’t have this feature or charges a fee, you should consider migrating to a hosting provider that provides this service for free.

Do I Need Special Hosting Provider for a WooCommerce Store?

Leading WordPress hosting providers such as Bluehost, SiteGround, or Hostinger offer the support you need to run and manage a WooCommerce store, so there’s no need to search for a web host specialized for WooCommerce sites.

Can a Hosting Provider Migrate My WordPress Site?

Most web hosts offer WordPress migration services, but they might charge a fee if you want to migrate a large WordPress website.

Boost Your WordPress Site by Migrating to a New Server

Dealing with inefficient customer support, struggling to resolve internal server errors, or worrying about exceeding your hosting plan’s limits will take your focus off the things that matter for your WordPress site.

Migrating to a different managed hosting platform will resolve some or all of these issues and enable you to concentrate on expanding your site’s audience and increasing revenue streams. This doesn’t mean WordPress migration is a magical solution to your site’s problems.

On the contrary, it only fixes technical issues that can potentially slow down your site’s growth so that you can dedicate your energy towards delivering excellent user experience to all your site’s visitors.

A team of WordPress experts that love to test out new WordPress related software, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes.