The fact that you’re reading this article means that you’re about to change your webhost and are looking for the best WordPress migration plugin to help you transfer your data in the most efficient way possible.
When moving your WordPress site to a different host there are a lot of things to consider. You have to migrate your database, files, theme, and plugins. All the while you have to make sure that you maintain your SEO ranking.
Ensuring that all of this goes smoothly, without your site experiencing downtime or losing data is very essential.
That’s what WordPress migration plugins are all about. They’ll help you migrate your site with all the trimmings in a fast and secure manner.
This will ensure that your website will experience no negative impacts during the migration process. Especially for those of you who are not familiar with the technicalities of moving a website to a new location manually these plugins are a blessing.
Free and Automatic Migration Without a Plugin
Whether you’ll be in need of a migration plugin or not is dependent on your hosting provider. If they take care of the migration of your website from another location to theirs, then you’ll be off the hook. So make sure to check with your future website host, whether this service is included in your hosting package or not.
Here at 10Web, we automatically transfer your old website to the new server with just a few clicks. The only thing you’ll be in charge of is clicking the button “Copy My Website” and entering your “old” domain name as well as the location for your data center. Et voilà, your site is successfully transferred in a matter of minutes.
And it goes without saying, that this service is offered to you for free.
This way, we want to spare you the trouble of adding yet another plugin and wasting time on researching which one is the best option for you. More than that, we want to limit the potential of additional, unnecessary expenditure.
If you want to check out this feature for yourself, you can. From now on, 10Webs offers a free trial with no credit card requirement, which will give you enough time to test our services without any obligations.
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With this, we’re basically providing you a shortcut that might end your quest for finding the best WordPress migration plugin prematurely.
What Defines a Good Migration Plugin?
Before we begin listing the best WordPress migration plugins, let’s first understand what you should be looking for in a migration plugin. Here’s a checklist for you:
Simplicity:
The reason people migrate their websites with a migration plugin is because they want to avoid the tedious process of doing it manually. That’s why it’s important that the migration plugin of your choice offers this service in just a few, simple steps that doesn’t require prior experience.
Comprehensiveness:
When choosing a migration plugin you want to be sure that the plugin can handle complex scripts and is capable of migrating the entirety of your data without neglecting anything.
Backups:
To protect your website’s data make sure that your migration tool not only allows you to back up your data manually but also to schedule your backups. This way you can make sure that whenever you decide that you want to migrate your data, you won’t have to worry about the actuality of your content.
Storage:
In line with this, it is also important to ensure that your migration plugin provides cloud storage possibilities, such as Amazon S3 or Dropbox. If not in its free version then at least in the premium version. This way you never have to worry that the plugin is not compatible with your website data’s size.
Low Costs:
Surely, as with anything else, the cost-benefit ratio also factors in people’s decision of which migration plugin is the best. Given that a considerable number of plugins can be purchased for free, this decision shouldn’t be too hard. However, to avoid unpleasant surprises, make sure to fully inform yourself about which services are included in the free version and how much an upgrade would cost you.
Of course, this list is only for the purpose of providing guidance. Feel free to add or remove criteria, that you think are more suitable for your website migration needs, as you please.
Using these points as a benchmark, we have compiled our list of best WordPress migration plugins:
1. Duplicator
It’s not possible to speak of the best WordPress migration plugins without mentioning the Duplicator plugin. It’s by far one of the most known and used migration plugins. Duplicator is available as a free as well as a chargeable version, named Duplicator Pro.
But what exactly is it that makes Duplicator so popular among users?
To begin with, Duplicator is very easy to handle. Basically, what you do is you install the plugin on your old website. Duplicator will then store all your files, database and other necessary extensions in a ZIP archive. Next to this archive, the plugin provides an installer. Once you copy the ZIP archive as well as the installer to your new server (easily done via FTP), you can launch the installer.
This installer will then take over all of the tasks that you would have otherwise done manually. This includes the import of data content, the download of data and files via FTP as well as the adjustment of all the information in the database.
For those of you who have more than one website that you need to migrate, Duplicator offers a multisite migration service, which will ensure a safer and faster process.
Furthermore, the plugin includes a backup service, manual as well as scheduled. If needed you have the possibility of storing your backed up data on a remote storage server, such as Google Drive or Dropbox, to name a few. This feature, however, is only available in the premium plan.
The downside of this plugin is for one that not everyone is acquainted with the process of connecting to the FTP server. This might require some training.
Secondly, the free version is limited, meaning that depending on the services required, the free version might not fulfill your requirements. The premium version starts at $59 per year for a total of 3 websites. Make sure to factor this in your cost calculations.
But all in all Duplicator stands out because of its simple and convenient handling as well as its speed.
2. BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is known as the most popular WordPress backup plugin. What people oftentimes overlook is that it can also serve as a migration tool. So, let’s take a look at why we decided to include it in our list of best WordPress migration plugins.
Generally speaking, BackupBuddy allows you to plan daily, weekly, and monthly backups in Amazon S3, FTP, Dropbox, Rackspace Cloud as well as Stash, which is their own cloud service. In addition to those storage possibilities, you also have the option to store your data via email.
This makes an easy and flawless migration of your website to another host possible. You will also have the opportunity of staging your site before running it live. Accordingly, you will also be able to push or pull content between staging and live sites.
Another advantage to this is that these services aren’t based on membership. Depending on your license you can use the plugin for any number of websites. The cheapest of all licences costs $80 per year. For this you’ll get access to premium support forums, updates as well as a 1 gigabyte cloud storage.
Being only available as a premium version, BackupBuddy can be a very attractive option for some and for others not so much. On one hand, most of you try to avoid unnecessary expenditures, which is why they tend to lean against purchasing this option.
On the other hand, you cannot neglect the fact that premium plugins bring higher quality, provide a higher level of security as well as a more efficient and qualified support whenever you need it.
What BackupBuddy doesn’t offer is multisite WordPress migration. Besides that, compared to its other contenders, it’s not as easily to handle. So newcomers might want to look for another more user-friendly alternative.
3. Migrate Guru
Behind Migrate Guru stands Blogvault, a known backup services provider. This migration plugin, being released in 2017 is relatively new in the market. According to Migrate Guru, their selling point is that its migration process is 80% faster than that of others.
Besides speed, the plugin also provides simple, one-click migrations as well as tracking and progress notifications.
On top of this, it is very well capable of handling the migration of larger websites (up to 200 gigabytes) and is compatible with almost all WordPress hosting providers.
Perhaps more importantly, Migrate Guru manages website migrations on its own server, meaning that you don’t have to worry about this process overloading your server by taking up storage space.
A drawback, however, is that the Migrate Guru plugin doesn’t include backup services. What’s more, is that it doesn’t support multisite migrations and you’re only allowed to conduct 5 website migrations per month. This can be particularly inconvenient for people who work with multiple websites simultaneously.
But to end this evaluation on a good note: Migrate Guru is free of charge. There’s not even an alternative premium version that would cost you more. Everything you just read here is provided to you for free.
So if you’re looking for a one-click migration service that will allow you to save your money, then this one might just be the best WordPress migration plugin for you.
4. All-in-One WP Migration
The next one that made it in our list of best WordPress migration plugins is All-in-One WP Migration. This plugin features a free and a paid version. The good news is that the free version already takes care of most of your needs, making it unlikely for you to have to upgrade.
As the name suggests, the All-in-One WP Migration plugin is known and appreciated among its users for its comprehensive nature.
To start with, the plugin offers a transfer of your website via drag and drop, making it very easy to handle for newbies.
Moreover, you don’t have to worry about the plugin not being compatible with your hosting provider. The All-in-One WP Migration plugin makes it their priority to ensure extensive compatibility.
For instance, even if your hosting provider doesn’t allow for large-sized uploads, the plugin manages to circumvent this limitation by transferring the data in small pieces.
For those of you who want to change their domain name, the plugin offers find and replace options for your data as well as serialization to avoid any kind of complications.
The downside, though, is that the free version only supports migration for sites that are up to 512 megabytes. For larger websites, you’ll have to upgrade to the premium version. The same goes for multisite migrations, which aren’t included in the free version, but can be added via a paid extension.
This paid extension is available at $69. For some, this might seem a lot. However, if you consider that you’ll be paying this price for a lifetime licence, then you might want to reconsider.
5. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is another plugin that is first and foremost made for website backups, but is capable of providing much more than that. One of the things that are within the range of its service is performing a website migration.
Similar to its previous contender Updraft plus has the big advantage of ease of use. It provides a one-click backup option, after which the migration process can be kickstarted – this is also done with just one click.
Being a backup plugin first and a migration plugin second, UpdraftPlus provides a very quick backup procedure. It does so by relying on cloud storage providers such as Google Drive or Dropbox.
It should be noted at this point that UpdraftPlus offers one of the widest spectrum of cloud storage services. But keep in mind that this plugin has a free and paid plan.
This means that other features, such as incremental backup, duplicates, quick migrations or other, more extensive cloud storage alternatives (e.g. Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, SFTP) are only available in the premium version.
For two licences the paid plan will cost you $70. You have the option of upgrading your plan. An unlimited site license will, however, cost you a whopping $195.
This brings us to the downside of this plugin, namely its high pricing. Depending on what you’re looking for in a migration plugin, this plugin can make you spend more than you would have to with the other options.
6. Super Backup & Clone
Our last item on the list of the 6 best WordPress migration plugins is Super Backup & Clone. With this plugin you can easily backup your data and import them to your new WordPress location.
It should be mentioned beforehand that this plugin isn’t for free. A licence for one website will cost you $35.
So let’s see what Super Backup & Clone has to offer and if it’s worth the money spent.
As is already hinted at in the name, the plugin provides backup, cloning and migration services.
When it comes to backup, an automation option is granted to the user. This will allow you to not only schedule your backups but the downloads of your backups as well.
Beyond that, you will be provided with a backup history on your dashboard, which will allow you to restore or migrate any version of your website as you wish.
Additionally, you’ll get customer support for the first six months, at the end of which you have the possibility of purchasing an extension.
On top of this, Super Backup & Clone offers various off-site storage options, such as Google Drive or Amazon S3 to name a few. This will with no doubt ensure the safety of your content.
But what’s even more attractive about this particular plugin is that you have the option of customizing your migration process.
For example, you can decide which specific part of your website content you want to migrate and which one not. Besides that, you are given the option of transferring a single website into a multisite and vice versa.
Since we can’t think of a con for this plugin, we’ll provide you with a “proxy con” instead:
Super Backup & Clone is an all-in-one package that brings together various services in one plugin. This can be very helpful and efficient for those among us who actually need these services.
For those who don’t, this plugin might prove to be a little too much to handle and not necessarily efficient. So, if you belong to the latter group, we would recommend you to go for a more standard and free plugin.
Did we neglect to mention a plugin that you use and would like to recommend to other users? Then please do share with us and let us know which item belongs in your list of best WordPress migration plugins!
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