cPanel Self Transfer

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The cPanel system provides options for backing up and restoring your website data which not only aid in keeping backups of your website, but also can be used to easily transfer your account from one cPanel server to another.

The following tutorial shows you how to transfer your website files, databases, email accounts, and other configuration, all without needing the assistance of a system administrator.

Note: This method only applies to accounts with less than 500MB of disk space used, and does not include SSL certificate transfers. This will only work if your new cPanel account uses the same domain name and username as the account on the cPanel server the backups were downloaded from. Contact the HostDime Sales Division with a support request at https://desk.hostdime.com/ to have your new account updated to reflect the same settings as your old account.

First log into your cPanel account on your current server with the old hosting company.

1. Log into the cPanel account on the old server

2. Click on Backup

3. Click on "Download a home directory Backup". Save the file to a location on your desktop or elsewhere on your local computer system.

4. Click on each of your databases listed. Each link will provide you with a file download which you can also save to your local computer system. In this example, abc, db2, and db3 are the databases listed.

5. Click on the links under 'Download Aliases or Filters Backup' to download the email forwarder or filtering configuration files for each of the domains you are hosting from your cPanel account. Since these settings are not stored under your home directory, its necessary to download these settings separately.

Now that you've downloaded all the data for your entire account (with the exception of SSL certificates), the next step is to restore the data on the new server.

6. Log into your new hosting account with the new hosting company.

8. Again, click on the Backup icon

9. Click on the 'Browse' button under the 'Restore a Home Directory Backup'. Locate the backup file you downloaded from the old server, and select it. Once you've done this, click on the 'Upload' button.

There will be a period of time while the home directory backup is uploading to the new server. After the upload is completed, the following type of output will display letting you know which files were restored.

If the home directory backup is too large, the upload may fail. This is due to the fact that the web server protocol (http) was not designed for file uploads. Optionally, you can download a large amount of your files from the old server, delete them from the old server, and re-download another home directory backup to increase the changes of the upload working without error on the new server.

If you don't wish to do this, then you can instead resort to a cPanel Full Backup Transfer via FTP.

10. Use the 'Restore a MySQL Database' option to restore each database backup that you downloaded from the old server.

The output for each database restore should look like so:

11. Use the 'Restore an Alias/Filter' option to restore the email forwarding (aliases) and/or email filtering configuration from your old account.

The output should look similar to this, with less or more information displayed.

12. After all this is done, you can opt to test your website on the new server using the Advanced Website Testing via the HOSTS File tutorial.

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