Migrations bring two real risks: downtime that costs revenue and ranking drops from broken redirects. We handle both.
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Five areas that determine whether a migration goes smoothly or generates a week of recovery work. Each one gets handled during pre-migration audit, executed during cutover, and verified after launch.
A staged clone with dual-DNS setup and continuous health checks during cutover, worth the extra infrastructure for high-traffic eCommerce or transactional platforms where every minute counts.
An 88-point checklist maps every indexed URL to its new equivalent, with 301 redirects under three hops, canonical tag updates, and Google Search Console change-of-address notification. Full checklist available on request.
Modern PHP versions and edge caching cut load times by 30 to 60 percent on most migrations, with the biggest gains on database-heavy sites like WooCommerce stores.
WAF rules, malware scanning, SSL verification, and review of outdated plugins or admin accounts that should have been cleaned up months ago. Migration is the right moment because the configuration is already being touched.
Core Web Vitals tracked weekly against pre-migration baseline, automated uptime alerts around the clock, and human business-hours response with after-hours escalation via Care, Growth, or Partnership packages.
products delivered since 2012
years migrating sites between hosts and platforms
uptime target on managed post-migration hosting
business days typical migration duration
Studio Ubique runs migrations for clients leaving slow shared hosting, agencies offloading hosting work, and businesses switching CMS platforms (Magento to Shopify, Wix or Squarespace to WordPress, custom to headless).
The questions that come up most often, answered here. Yours not among them? Just ask, there's a human on the other end.
Migration costs depend on three factors: the size of the site (URL count, content volume, media assets), the platform change involved (same platform to new host is cheaper than CMS-to-CMS migration), and the SEO preservation work required. Typical ranges. Same-platform migration (cPanel to cPanel, WordPress to WordPress on new host): €1.500 to €4.000. Cross-platform CMS migration (WordPress to Shopify, Magento to WooCommerce, Wix to WordPress): €4.000 to €12.000. Complex migrations (custom CMS to modern platform, headless rebuilds, multi-site consolidation): €8.000 to €25.000+. Hourly rates run €60 to €65. Our pricing page covers the broader rate structure.
Typical timelines. Same-platform migration: 1 to 3 business days from kickoff to live. Cross-platform CMS migration (WordPress to Shopify, Magento to WooCommerce): 1 to 4 weeks depending on content volume and customisation. Complex migrations with redirect mapping for high-traffic sites: 2 to 8 weeks. The variable that surprises clients: pre-migration audit and planning takes longer than the actual cutover. A 100-page site can be cloned and moved in hours, but mapping 5.000 indexed URLs to new equivalents takes days of careful work. Plus DNS propagation after cutover (24 to 48 hours globally) means full completion happens a couple of days after the technical work finishes. Our process page covers the project structure that applies to migrations.
Depends on the migration approach. Standard migration with brief scheduled downtime: typically 5 to 30 minutes during off-peak hours. DNS propagation continues 24 to 48 hours globally but visitors hitting the old DNS during this window get redirected automatically. True zero-downtime migration with dual-DNS setup and parallel infrastructure: under 30 seconds during the actual cutover, costs more because two infrastructure environments run simultaneously during the migration window. For most marketing sites the brief scheduled downtime makes more economic sense. For high-traffic eCommerce, transactional platforms, or sites with active user sessions during cutover, zero-downtime is worth it. The right approach gets recommended during the scoping call based on your traffic patterns and revenue impact per downtime minute.
Six steps. First, crawl the existing site to inventory every indexed URL using Screaming Frog or similar tools. Output: a complete list of URLs that need to either move to the new structure or get redirected. Second, map each URL to its new equivalent. Identical structures get 1:1 mapping. Different structures need decision-by-decision mapping. Third, configure 301 redirects keeping chains under three hops (Google penalises longer chains). Fourth, update canonical tags on the new site. Fifth, notify Google Search Console with change-of-address, plus Bing Webmaster Tools. Sixth, post-launch monitoring: rankings tracked weekly for the first month. Most migrations show a small temporary ranking dip in the first 2 to 4 weeks (Google takes time to recrawl and re-evaluate), with full recovery within 6 to 12 weeks for well-executed migrations.
Five common types. Host-to-host within the same platform (cPanel to cPanel, between managed WordPress hosts like WP Engine to Kinsta, Cloudways to SiteGround): typically straightforward, focus is performance and cost optimisation. CMS-to-CMS migration (Magento to Shopify, WordPress to headless WordPress, Wix to WordPress, Squarespace to WordPress, Magento to BigCommerce): more complex because content models often differ between platforms, content needs manual restructuring. Domain change (rebranding, splitting one domain into multiple, consolidating multiple domains into one): SEO-sensitive because redirect mapping is critical. eCommerce platform migration (Shopify to WooCommerce, Magento to Shopify, custom to off-the-shelf): adds product catalogue migration, order history preservation, customer accounts, payment provider reconnection. Multi-site consolidation: the most complex, involves content audit, redirect strategy across multiple old domains, brand decision-making for the merged site.
Every migration includes a rollback plan documented before cutover. Standard rollback: revert DNS to point at the old infrastructure, which (depending on how DNS was configured pre-migration) takes between minutes and a few hours to propagate. The old site stays online and fully functional throughout the migration window, we don’t take it offline during cutover. If rollback gets triggered, we investigate what went wrong on a staging environment, fix the issue, and reschedule the cutover. Rollback triggers typically include: post-cutover errors that can’t be diagnosed and fixed within a defined window, sharper-than-expected ranking drops, payment gateway integration failure on the new platform, or any data integrity issue (orders missing, customer accounts unreachable, content corruption). Rollback gets used rarely, maybe 1 in 30 migrations, but having the documented plan means decisions get made quickly rather than reactively when something does go wrong.
Standard post-migration package includes 30 days of monitoring after cutover. Week one: daily checks for errors, broken redirects, performance regressions, ranking drops. Weekly Core Web Vitals tracking against pre-migration baseline. Weeks 2 to 4: weekly reporting on rankings, traffic, and issues that surfaced. After 30 days the migration is considered complete and ongoing monitoring continues through standard hosting or maintenance arrangements. For migrations involving heavy SEO investment (large content sites, ranking-critical pages, established eCommerce), longer monitoring windows are recommended, typically 90 days minimum. The Care, Growth, and Partnership packages on the website support page cover ongoing monitoring, maintenance, and improvement work after the standard migration window closes.
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