How to Migrate Your WordPress Site to Kinsta (Step by Step)

Last updated: October 2026 · 10 min read

Moving hosts is the part of switching to Kinsta that worries people most — and it's the part you have to do the least work for. Kinsta's team migrates WordPress sites for free, on every plan, with no downtime. This guide walks through exactly how the process works, what you need to prepare, and what happens after the migration is done. Every step below reflects Kinsta's documented migration process.

Before You Start: The 5-Minute Checklist

Do these before requesting anything — they prevent 90% of migration headaches:

• Back up your current site. Your old host's backup tool or a plugin like UpdraftPlus works. Kinsta will handle the move, but never migrate without your own safety copy.
• Note your current login credentials. You'll need WordPress admin access and, ideally, hosting panel or SFTP access to your current site for the migration team.
• Check Kinsta's restricted plugin list. Kinsta blocks a small set of plugins (mostly caching, backup, and security plugins that duplicate their server-level systems). If you rely on one, plan a replacement before migrating.
• List your DNS setup. Know where your domain's DNS is managed (your registrar, Cloudflare, etc.) and whether the domain also handles email — you don't want to break email when you switch web hosting.
• Pick a low-traffic window for the DNS switch. The migration itself has no downtime, but plan the final DNS change for a quiet period anyway.

Option A: Kinsta's Free Migration Service (Recommended)

All Kinsta plans include free, unlimited WordPress migrations handled by Kinsta's own expert team — people whose full-time job is moving sites to Kinsta. Here's the process:

1. Sign up for a Kinsta plan Pick the plan that fits your traffic and site count. New customers get the first month free on the Launch plan, and every plan carries a 30-day money-back guarantee — so the migration itself is risk-free.
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2. Log in to MyKinsta and request a migration In your MyKinsta dashboard, add a new site and choose the migration option. Fill in the request form with your current site's details and hosting credentials — the more complete the info, the faster things go.
3. Kinsta's team migrates your site Their engineers copy your files and database, handle URL search-and-replace safely (so serialized data doesn't break), convert legacy database tables where needed, and run integrity checks. If you don't pick a specific date, migrations are typically completed within 1 business day. Migrating many sites? The team handles roughly 8–10 sites per business day. In a hurry? There's an expedited migration option ($49) that prioritizes your move.
4. Preview and verify on a temporary URL Before anything goes live, you get a temporary Kinsta URL to test the migrated site. Click through it carefully: homepage, key pages, forms, checkout if you run a store, and the WordPress admin. Compare against your live site. If anything looks off, the migration team fixes it — this QA step is part of the service.
5. Point your DNS to Kinsta Once you're happy with the migrated copy, update your domain's DNS to point at Kinsta (they provide the exact records). This is the only step where timing matters — but your old site stays live until DNS propagates, so visitors see no downtime.
6. Confirm the live site and clean up After DNS propagates (often much faster than the theoretical maximum of 48 hours), verify the live domain loads from Kinsta, check SSL is active, and confirm forms and checkout work. Only then cancel your old hosting.

What you do during all of this: essentially nothing, unless you choose the manual route. Per Kinsta's own documentation: the team handles the migration and lets you know when it's complete — at that point, you just update your DNS to go live.

Option B: Migrate It Yourself

Prefer to keep your hands on the wheel? Kinsta publishes detailed manual migration documentation. Their recommended approach:

• Use the free Duplicator plugin — Kinsta's own docs recommend it. It packages your site into a zip file plus an installer script, which you upload to the new Kinsta install and run to unpack everything.
• Or follow Kinsta's manual migration docs step by step: create the site in MyKinsta, move files via SFTP, import the database via phpMyAdmin, run a search-and-replace on URLs, then switch DNS the same way as above.

Honest advice: unless you enjoy this kind of work, let the free team do it. The manual path exists for control freaks and edge cases (like multisite networks, where you create the multisite install in MyKinsta first and migrate each subsite individually).

After the Migration: Going Live Checklist

• SSL: Kinsta provisions free SSL automatically — confirm the padlock shows on your domain.
• Caching: Kinsta's server-level and edge caching are on by default. If you used a caching plugin before, remove it (it's likely on the restricted list anyway).
• DNS propagation: can take up to 48 hours in theory, usually much faster. Don't cancel old hosting until the domain resolves to Kinsta everywhere.
• Email: if your domain handles email, make sure you only changed the web records (A/CNAME) — not nameservers — so mail keeps flowing.
• Backups: Kinsta starts automatic daily backups on the new site. Take a manual backup point once everything's confirmed working.
• Monitoring: keep an eye on MyKinsta analytics for the first week — visits, bandwidth, and cache hit rates tell you the migration is healthy.