If at anytime during your hosting period, you are unhappy with your host; you should start looking for another web host. Often times, people have problems with their host, but they do not take the time to consider another host. In the end, your website will be affected. Switching hosting companies is being looked at as a tough task, but it is not true. In the past, hosting companies never helped with hosting transfers and website re-location. The hosting company industry is becoming a tough industry to make money in. New hosting companies are arising everyday, but it is all the more harder for them to make the same dollar a reputable host makes. Due to this fierce competition, hosting companies are now offering to transfer your website from your old host for no extra charge. However, if a hosting company does it, they will not take downtime into consideration. If you want to avoid any downtime, you should follow the instructions given below.

Firstly, you should have your new host picked out and decided on. Once everything is well with the plan, you should go ahead with the account creation. When you sign up for a new host, they will provide you with account login information as well as your name servers. Keep all the information in a safe place as you will be need it later on. Your next step is to login to your old hosting control panel and download your website files. There are two ways you can do this; you can download the files in bulk from your FTP client or you can generate and download a backup from your control panel. Once you have your files on your computer, you can login to your new control panel. Upload all the files back onto your new control panel. If you generated a zipped backup file, it is best if you unzip the package and upload the files. At the end of the upload process, make sure that all your files are uploaded. Even if one file is missing, your website will not be completely working.

A major issue many people have trouble with is transferring databases and emails. Your control panel will have a database platform which will allow you to export your database tables. You will need to copy the data and add it to a notepad file, or just download the database file. Emails should be re-created as it does not take a long time to create them. If you have a large amount of emails in your account, you should ask your host to transfer the email accounts. Once your full website is uploaded to your new host, you can change the name servers on your domain.

Login to your domain control panel, and replace the existing name servers with the new ones. There should be a minimum of two name servers. DNS propagation takes anywhere from several minutes to forty-eight hours, so patience is key here. Once three days has passed, or when the name servers have set in, you can go to your old host and delete the data. By doing this, you will bypass the chance of having any downtime.