Websites
Moving your website off a site builder
Site builders are a reasonable way to start and a bad place to stay. The monthly fee never ends, the pages load slowly, and you cannot take the site with you. Moving off one is not difficult — it is just easy to do badly.
You are probably here because
If two or three of these are true, this is a problem worth fixing properly.
- You are paying a monthly fee for a site you cannot export
- The site loads slowly and scores badly on Google PageSpeed
- You cannot add a page or a feature without paying for a higher plan
- The design looks like the template it came from
- Your images are licensed through the subscription and vanish if you cancel
- You are worried that moving the site will break your email
What you get
- A site you own outright
- Source code in your own repository, hosted wherever you choose. No subscription that holds your website hostage.
- Rankings preserved
- Existing URLs mapped and redirected, metadata carried across, and a sitemap submitted, so the search visibility you have already earned is not thrown away.
- Email untouched
- Website records and mail records are separate. We change only the ones that point at the site, and verify mail is still flowing before anything is cancelled.
- Content you can edit
- Handed over with documentation so your own team can update pages and publish posts without calling a developer.
How it runs
-
Inventory
Every existing page, URL, image and form catalogued, along with what currently ranks and what gets traffic.
-
Rebuild
The new site built and deployed to a temporary address, where you can review it without anything live changing.
-
Cut over
Redirects in place, then only the website DNS records changed. Mail records are left alone.
-
Verify, then cancel
A full day confirming the site is live, secure and email still works, before you cancel the old subscription.
Questions we get asked
Will moving my site break my email?
Not if it is done in the right order. Your website lives on A and CNAME records; your email lives on MX records. They are separate entries in the same DNS panel. We change only the website records and verify mail before anything is cancelled.
Will I lose my Google rankings?
Not if URLs are mapped and redirected properly. Rankings are usually lost when a migration changes every URL with no redirects. Done correctly, you generally see rankings improve, because the new site is considerably faster.
Can I keep my domain name?
Yes. The domain, the hosting and the email are three separate purchases even when you bought them together. Moving the website does not require moving the domain, though you can if you want to.
Can I edit the site myself afterwards?
Yes. We set it up so content lives in plain files or a CMS, whichever suits your team, and hand over documentation. If you would rather we handle updates, we offer that too.
What about the photos on my current site?
Check the licence before assuming. Stock images supplied inside a site builder are usually licensed through that subscription and the licence ends when you cancel. We will flag any that cannot come with you.
How long does a migration take?
A small brochure site is typically one to three weeks. Larger sites with e-commerce or many hundreds of URLs take longer, mostly because of the redirect mapping rather than the build.
Get a migration estimate
Send us your current site address and we will tell you what is involved, what it will cost, and whether it is worth doing at all.