How to migrate to Hostinger without downtime

Before you touch anything

1. Take a full backup of the old host — files and database — and download it to your own machine. Not to the old server. Not to the new one.
2. Write down your DNS records. Screenshot the whole zone: A, CNAME, MX, TXT (SPF/DKIM), and any subdomains. This is the step people skip and it is the one that breaks email.
3. Note the software versions — PHP version, database version, and any non-standard extensions the site relies on.
4. Lower the TTL on your DNS records to 300 seconds, at least 24 hours before the switch, so propagation is fast when you flip.

Move the site

Hostinger migrates WordPress and most standard sites for free from the panel: give it the old host credentials and it copies files and database for you. If you prefer doing it by hand, the sequence is: upload files, import the database, update the database credentials in the config file, and fix hard-coded URLs if the domain changes.

Either way, do not change DNS yet.

Test before you switch — the hosts-file trick

You can view the new server on the real domain, privately, before anyone else does. Add the new server IP and your domain to your computer's hosts file, and your machine alone resolves the domain to the new host.

Then walk the site as a visitor: the home page, a deep post, the search, the contact form, the cart and checkout if you have one, login, and the admin area. Check that images load and that no page mixes HTTP and HTTPS. Everything you find now costs nothing; everything you find after the switch is an outage.

The email trap

Changing nameservers moves all DNS, including MX. If your email lives elsewhere — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, a separate mail host — and you do not recreate the MX and TXT records on the new DNS, inbound mail stops arriving the moment the change propagates. Recreate every mail record on the new host before switching, not after.

Go live, then verify

1. Change the nameservers (or the A record) at your registrar.
2. Issue the SSL certificate on the new host and confirm HTTPS with no mixed-content warnings.
3. Set up redirects if any URL changed, and keep them permanent (301).
4. Send a test email in and out.
5. In Search Console, request a re-crawl and watch for 404s over the next week.
6. Keep the old hosting alive for at least a week. It is cheap insurance.

If you would rather not do it yourself

Mirror ORG handles the migration for customers who buy through us — including the DNS and mail records, which are the parts that actually go wrong. Message us on WhatsApp with your current host and we will tell you honestly whether it is a ten-minute job or a real project.

Questions people actually ask