Moving your website to a new host sounds intimidating, but with iWebVault most of the work is automated. This article gives you the big picture before you start — what a migration actually involves, the three machines in play, and what you can expect at each stage. Once you understand the flow, every other migration guide in this section will make more sense.
The three machines involved
Every migration touches three places: your old host (where your site lives now), iWebVault control (which schedules and coordinates the move), and your new iWebVault account (where your site ends up). The diagram below shows how they relate.
The important thing to notice: the backup is pulled directly from your old host to your new iWebVault server. Your data does not bounce through a third machine or your own computer, which keeps the move fast and private.
What you need before starting
For a single website or cPanel account, you only need three things:
- Your old cPanel username and password (the same login you use on your current host)
- Your old host’s hostname or server IP
- An active iWebVault hosting plan, so your destination account already exists
What actually transfers
A migration brings across everything that makes your site work: website files, databases, email accounts and messages, DNS zone records, cron jobs, and SSL where applicable. Your database names are preserved exactly, so configuration files like wp-config.php keep working without edits.
How long it takes
Most small sites migrate in a few minutes. Larger accounts — several gigabytes of files or large databases — take proportionally longer because the backup has to be built and transferred. The process runs on its own schedule in the background, so you can start it and walk away.
Two kinds of migration
There are two flavours, depending on what you’re moving:
- Single account — one website / cPanel account. You can run this yourself from your client area.
- Bulk reseller — many accounts owned by a reseller, moved together. This is run by our team or an administrator.
A typical migration, start to finish
To make this concrete, here’s what a real single-site migration looks like end to end. You buy an iWebVault plan, which immediately creates your destination cPanel account. You open the migration tool in your client area and enter your old cPanel username, password, and your old host’s server hostname. The tool validates those details on the spot. You submit, and the migration enters the queue.
Within a minute it begins running. iWebVault connects to your old host and asks it to build a full backup of your account. For a small blog this takes a couple of minutes; for a large store it can take much longer, and that’s fine — the system waits patiently for the backup to be genuinely complete rather than grabbing a half-finished file. Once the backup is ready, iWebVault pulls it directly across and restores it into your new account. When the status reads completed, you preview the site, confirm it looks right, and only then point your domain here. Your visitors never experienced a moment of downtime.
Why iWebVault migrations protect your privacy
Because the backup travels straight from your old host to your iWebVault server, your data is never staged on a third-party machine or routed through an intermediary you don’t control. That matters for privacy-conscious customers — and it’s consistent with iWebVault being offshore, anonymous, and DMCA-ignored by default. Your move is as private as your hosting.
When to ask us to run it
Most single-site migrations are genuinely self-service — you’ll be done in minutes. But you should feel free to hand any migration to our team: very large accounts, complex multi-domain setups, reseller fleets, or simply if you’d rather we handle it. Open a ticket and we’ll run the whole thing and confirm when it’s done.
What this section of the knowledge base covers
The remaining articles walk through every part of the process in detail: a pre-migration checklist, the self-service walkthrough, where to find your old credentials, how to read the status, what to verify afterward, how DNS cutover and SSL work, the reseller bulk process, and a full set of troubleshooting guides. Start with whichever matches what you’re doing — single site or reseller fleet — and follow the cross-links at the end of each article.
Frequently asked at this stage
Is my old site affected while the migration runs?
Not at all. The migration only reads your old account to build a backup; it never writes to or alters the old host. Your live site keeps serving visitors exactly as before, right up until you choose to point your domain at iWebVault.
What if I host more than one website?
Each cPanel account migrates as a unit. If you have several separate sites in separate accounts, you run a migration for each. If one account hosts several domains as addon domains, they all come across together in that single migration.
Do I need any technical skill?
For a single site, no — if you can find your old cPanel login and copy a server hostname, you can run it. For reseller fleets or unusual setups, our team does the technical part for you. The system is designed so that the common case requires no expertise.
How iWebVault’s approach compares
Many hosts either charge for migrations, demand root access you may not have, or hand you a manual process of downloading and re-uploading backups yourself. iWebVault’s tooling automates the whole pipeline, works with ordinary cPanel or reseller access, and pulls data directly between servers. The result is faster, more private, and far less hands-on than the traditional do-it-yourself approach.
That said, automation never removes your control. You decide when to start, you verify before cutover, and you choose the moment to switch DNS. The system does the heavy lifting; you keep the decisions.
What’s next
- Pre-Migration Checklist — Before You Move
- Migrate Your cPanel Account Yourself
- What Actually Transfers in a Migration
Still stuck? Our team can run or finish the migration for you — open a support ticket and we’ll take it from there.
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