There isn’t one right way to migrate a WordPress site — the right method depends on your technical comfort, whether you have SSH access, and how complex the site is. Here are the four real options, what each actually requires, and which one fits which situation. For the detailed step-by-step process once you’ve picked a method, the complete WordPress migration guide covers the full walkthrough and the common failure points; this post is about choosing the right approach first.
Method 1: A Migration Plugin
Duplicator, All-in-One WP Migration, and UpdraftPlus all package your files and database into a single archive you can restore on the new host. Install the plugin on the source site, generate the backup package, install a fresh WordPress on the destination, then restore the package there.
Best for: most site owners and small-to-medium sites. It’s the lowest-technical-skill option that still handles the database URL replacement automatically, which is the step manual migrations most often get wrong. Watch for: free-tier size limits on some plugins — a large media library or a big WooCommerce order history can exceed what the free version handles in one package.
Method 2: Host-to-Host Migration Tools
Many hosts provide a built-in migration tool for moving a site onto their platform, sometimes handling the entire process — files, database, DNS guidance — with a few clicks. Check whether your destination host offers one before doing anything else, since it’s often the fastest option when it’s available.
Best for: moving specifically to a host that supports it. Watch for: it only works one direction (into that host), and it’s a black box — if something goes wrong mid-migration, you have less visibility into what happened than with a manual or WP-CLI approach.
Method 3: WP-CLI Over SSH
If you have SSH access to both servers and are comfortable on the command line, WP-CLI gives you the most control and, for a technical user, the fastest process:
wp db export backup.sql
rsync -avz /path/to/wordpress/ user@newserver:/path/to/destination/
wp db import backup.sql
wp search-replace 'oldsite.com' 'newsite.com'Best for: developers who already work in the command line and want precise control over exactly what moves and when. Watch for: no safety net if you skip a step — this method assumes you already know what a correct migration looks like, since there’s no plugin UI catching missing pieces for you.
Method 4: Manual (FTP + phpMyAdmin)
Download files via FTP, export the database, create a new database on the destination, import it, and update wp-config.php and the site URL by hand through phpMyAdmin. This is the fallback when a host doesn’t support the other three methods, not a first choice.
Best for: restrictive hosting environments with no SSH and no migration plugin support. Watch for: it’s the most error-prone method by a wide margin — a missed URL replacement or a wrong file permission is easy to overlook and hard to diagnose afterward.
Which Method Should You Use?
Check for a host-to-host tool first — it’s free speed if it exists. If not, a migration plugin is the right default for most people, since it handles the URL replacement step that manual migrations get wrong most often. Reach for WP-CLI only if you’re already comfortable with SSH and want more control than a plugin gives you. Manual FTP is the last resort, reserved for hosting setups that block everything else.
If you’d rather not run the migration yourself, especially for a WooCommerce store where downtime has a real cost, WordPress migration services cover the process end to end with zero downtime and no lost SEO.
