How to Migrate WordPress Hosting Using the Duplicator WordPress Plugin: A DIY Guide

Forrest Pykes Jun 23, 2025

Previously I shared a guide on how to manually migrate a WordPress site . Today, I’m going to expand on that series by adding an alternative way to migrate a WordPress site to a new server that’s going to be even easier than last time.

I have tried and tested this approach on several of my sites and the migration was completed in a matter of minutes without any issues.

In this guide, I’ll be using a free WordPress plugin called Duplicator , which allows you to migrate a WordPress site in a few easy steps. You can use this plugin to:

  • Migrate a WordPress site from one server to another
  • Migrate Local Developer WordPress to Live Server
  • Clone a live server WordPress site on your local desktop server

In this tutorial, I will use the example of moving a website from one live server to another live server.

This is an unplanned migration because I wanted to leave HostGator and try SiteGround hosting a long time ago. Since SiteGround is not an EIG host, and the reviews I heard about them recently are all good. Today, I received a payment email from HostGator, so I decided to migrate my website from HostGator to SiteGround . So I bought their two-year GrowBig hosting plan and started the migration.

In this tutorial, I went through all the steps to migrate a website and some of the challenges I encountered. Using the WordPress Duplicator plugin is easy, but I don't recommend it to everyone because it requires some technical expertise. Next, read this tutorial and then you can decide for yourself whether you want to migrate your WordPress hosting yourself or seek help from a professional.

How to prepare to migrate your WordPress site to a new hosting server?

If you’ve read our basic guide to moving WordPress, you’ll know there are a few basic steps involved:

  • Move files (WP-content folder, WP-config, .htaccess, robots.txt) from old server to new server
  • Move the database from the old server to the new server
  • Change the domain name servers from the old servers to the new servers

These are the only steps required to complete the task, and you can do them manually or take advantage of a free plugin like WP Duplicator .

The WP Duplicator plugin will create an archive of your existing WordPress files and database and allow you to quickly unpack and install everything on your new server. Now that you are clear about the steps, I will guide you step by step.

Prepare your existing WordPress site for migration:

Log in to your WordPress dashboard, install and activate the Duplicator plugin. The first step is to create a package that contains all the basic files needed for the new server.

Click on Duplicator > Packages > Create New Package:

How to Migrate WordPress Hosting Using the Duplicator WordPress Plugin: A DIY Guide

You can click Archive and then deselect certain tables from your database or deselect any directories to be included in the archive. I recommend that you delete all cache files from your cache plugins and optimize your WordPress database ( see this guide ) before creating your Duplicator package.

Rest, click “Next” and the Duplicator plugin will scan your WordPress site and show you the following:

  • Very large files (Tip: You can use the Duplicator plugin to handle large files in the WordPress media directory)
  • Any other warnings

If you find any errors, fix it and then click “Rerun Scan” to have the Duplicator plugin scan your site again. In my experience, I ended up removing some very large files that I had added two years ago, which reduced the overall size of my package. (Scan results are shown in the screenshot below)

How to Migrate WordPress Hosting Using the Duplicator WordPress Plugin: A DIY Guide

Click “Build” and the Duplicator plugin will create a package containing the installer file and the archive file. Depending on the size of your WordPress site, this process may take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes.

How to Migrate WordPress Hosting Using the Duplicator WordPress Plugin: A DIY Guide

You need to download the installer and archive files , these are the only files you need to migrate to the new server. Once you have downloaded both files, let’s migrate to the new server, we will do a few things on the new server to complete the WordPress server migration.

Prepare the new hosting server for migration:

One of the great things about the Duplicator plugin is that you don’t have to install WordPress on a new server. The plugin does all the work and you just have to create a new database and user .

In this case, I kept the same domain name and just changed my hosting server.

You can change hosting and your WordPress website domain using the same steps (just change the domain name).

On your new hosting server, you will need to do the following:

  • Create a database and add a user with full permissions to the database. Write down the database name, database user, and password locally. We will need this information in the next step. If your new server is a typical cPanel host, you can read this guide to learn how to create a database manually .
  • Upload the installer and archive file (.zip format): Access your new hosting server via FTP and upload the installer and archive file to the root location of your domain on the new server.

Once you have done this you will need to turn on the new server IP using the installer.php file at the end. What I did here is I edited the hosts file on my local computer to map the domain name to the new IP, which made things much easier.

In this case, I simply go to wpfreesetup.com/installer.php and my screen looks like this:

How to Migrate WordPress Hosting Using the Duplicator WordPress Plugin: A DIY Guide

What’s important here is:

You will need to add your new database details and then click 'Test Connection' to check that everything is working. In most cases your host will be localhost and the rest of the database details will be from the database you just created on the new server.

Click Next and you will see a screen like this:

How to Migrate WordPress Hosting Using the Duplicator WordPress Plugin: A DIY Guide* Savings

In the above screen, I just changed the URL field. Since this plugin uses a temporary URL, I changed it to my domain name (http://WPfreesetup.com), and that’s it! Click “Next” and if everything goes well, your existing WordPress site will be migrated to the new server.

How to Migrate WordPress Hosting Using the Duplicator WordPress Plugin: A DIY Guide

You should also have your FTP login information handy so you can check that all your files have been saved properly. If for any reason this step doesn't work to migrate your site, you can always repeat the process on the new server and get it back to working. (Since I was doing this for the first time, it took me two tries to get it to migrate successfully).

Once you are satisfied, update your domain name servers to point to the new host server. When you log into the WordPress dashboard of the new server, the Duplicator plugin will also ask you to delete all existing dump files (these are the files we use to migrate WordPress sites from the old host to the new host).

How to Migrate WordPress Hosting Using the Duplicator WordPress Plugin: A DIY Guide

Also, you should check your FTP and if you find any dump files, delete them. I encountered a few errors while doing this migration, here is how I fixed them:

Error connecting to database:

  • On my first try, my database somehow didn't upload and I had to repeat the process to fix it. If you get this error, you may want to check that the tables were added to the new database and that the WP-config.php file has the correct database credentials. You can fix this by repeating the process from the beginning.
  • ionCube Encoder for PHP 5: This is the most common error you may encounter when changing WordPress servers. I temporarily disabled the plugin so that I can continue with this process. You can contact your new hosting company or plugin developer for a solution.

Conclusion: Duplicator plugin makes it easy to migrate WordPress

After using the Duplicator plugin, I was very impressed with it because it is free and the migration process is very simple. Your experience may vary depending on the size of your database and WordPress files, but overall, as a free option, it solves the problem of migrating a WordPress site to a new server.

I have not tried the same method to move a live server to a local server or vice versa, but you can try it as the process is simple and recommended by many professionals in the WordPress field.

Please tell me how your experience was with the Duplicator WordPress plugin and if you would like to suggest another way to migrate a website from one server to another?

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