Hosting Account Migration Instructions

SierraHosts is switching up our business model after 17 years in the hosting business.

Effective February 2017, existing SierraHosts web hosting accounts will be asked to migrate to SiteGround Hosting at the end of their paid terms unless you specify another hosting provider. Clients have 14 days at no extra charge to complete this process. After 14 days, all account files will be deleted from our servers.

Why are we recommending SiteGround? After thorough research and consideration, we recommend them for a number of very important reasons:

  • Fair and transparent pricing
  • Fast, 24/7 customer support
  • Globally distributed data centers
  • Highly positive customer reviews
  • Modern, fast SSD drives
  • Free Let’s Encrypt SSL for all accounts
  • Excellent cPanel and WordPress support
  • Free migration of your existing site, cPanel and email accounts
  • Free daily backups of your site
  • Free Cloudflare CDN for fast page loading
  • Recommended by the WordPress.org Project

If your hosting term is coming to an end, please follow these steps to migrate your website to SiteGround:

Step 1. Go to SiteGround

Click here to go to SiteGround’s website and choose a hosting plan. (The link will open in a new window so you can continue to follow the instructions below.)

Step 2. Choose a Hosting Plan

Choose a plan that fits your website’s current needs:

  • The StartUp plan is ideal for small websites and customers currently on our Bronze and Silver plans.
  • The GrowBig plan is a great value and includes option for multiple websites and the SuperCacher which greatly improves a WordPress website’s speed. Best choice for those on Gold and Platinum plans.
  • The GoGeek plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and large websites. Suited for those on our Titanium plan.

If you have more than one website on your server, you will need a GrowBig plan or higher.

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Step 3. Enter Your Domain Name

Check ‘I already have a Domain’ and then type in the primary domain used with your SierraHosts account into the field. Once you do that, a notification will pop up that you qualify for a free website transfer. This transfer includes one WordPress or HTML website and your entire cPanel along with email accounts and forwarders (if you set those up in cPanel). Click Proceed.

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Step 4. Review and Complete

Enter your new account, client and payment details. Be sure to always use a complex password that contains random numbers, letters and special characters for best security. Make a note of the email and password you used and keep a record of this in a safe place.

Review your plan in the Hosting Services section. Double-check or change your plan. Choose the length of the discounted term (Trial/12/24/36 Months). The longer term you pay for in advance, the more you save. Keep the default data center (Chicago) if the bulk of your site’s visitors are in the US, otherwise choose an alternative data center.

In the Extra Services section, choose whether or not you want the ‘SG Site Scanner / Hack Alert’ feature. It’s not required, so uncheck if you don’t want this.

A basic Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and website transfer is included free with every account. For most small business websites that don’t take payments online, this should be sufficient. A wildcard SSL certificate comes free for the first year with a GrowBig plan or higher and costs $60/year after that. If you’re taking payments online, you will definitely want to purchase a more robust SSL certificate during checkout.

Please note that if you have multiple websites on your SierraHosts hosting plan, you will need to select a ‘Grow Big’ or higher plan and additional website transfers beyond your account’s primary website are extra.

Check the confirm box and then click the ‘Pay Now’ button.

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Step 5. Check your Inbox

Check your inbox for the email from SiteGround with the subject line “Important Information About Your New Hosting Account”. The email includes details about your new hosting plan that should be printed out and stored in a safe place for future reference. Most importantly is the domain nameservers info that you will need to update your domain with via your domain registrar account.

Step 6. Request Your Free Website Migration

You will need three pieces of information before requesting a site migration from SiteGround:

  1. Your domain registry account login information (the company you registered your domain with).
  2. Your cPanel (or other web admin panel) login info for the web server your site is currently on.
  3. Your WordPress admin level login information.

If you don’t know who your domain registrar is, use this tool to find out: http://whois.domaintools.com/ Enter your domain, click search, and your registrar will be listed on line 3 next to ‘Registrar’.

Next, login to your SiteGround account, go to the User Area -> Support -> Transfer Website section and submit a support ticket to request your site migration. For more information, see this article at SiteGround. SiteGround will tell you what info they need to start your migration.

If you require a copy of your cPanel URL, username and password, please send an email to: paul@sierrahosts.net

Thanks for doing business with SierraHosts.net.