Migrating Website and Email hosting from one provider to another

I am gearing up to launch website redesign for Silk Trends Hair Design - A Hair Salon based in Chingford, East London.

As this it is a professional business I suggest that they move to a professional and reliable hosting service provider (including email).  Website hosting will be move from Purplecloud hosting service to Godaddy Deluxe Hosting plan.

As Silk Trends is a small business costs savings can be made by utilitising the free business services provided by Google Apps.  Email will be hosted on Google Apps and the company will also make use of Calendar, Docs as well as bespoke apps on the Google Apps Engine.

As their email service is critical to their business I decided to test the hosting migration in 2 stages.

Moving web hosting and email hosting at the same time to Godaddy (as you get 5 email accounts free with your Deluxe Hosting Plan), then moving email to Google Apps.  I used a spare domain (example mydomainname.co.uk) to test the migration process:

If you are hosting a domain somewhere, the control over DNS settings is handle at Hosting provider, NOT Domain Registrar (if they are not the same). So any changes to CNAME, MX records, etc should be done at Hosting Provider.

If your domain does not have hosting yet, then DNS settings are handled by Domain Registrar.

Migrating Website and Email Hosting to Godaddy

1. Reset DNS name servers to default Domain Registrar nameservers (LCN.com) - (You don't really need to do this, but it helped me to understand how it all works. Your old site will not be displayed anymore, and domain will be parked at Domain Registrar servers).  This took around 2 hours for me, but you could be waiting up to 48 hours.
2. At Godaddy, log into your Hosting Plan and go to Domain Management section, add  mydomainname.co.uk to allocate folder for its content (or create a new folder). 
3. Go to My Account and Email Management section and created new Email account for mydomainname.co.uk.  Set up X number of users (each one will have seperate access to mail box via Godaddy Webmail).
4. Go to DNS Management section again and edit Domain Zone File records for the domain (add a new Domain Zone File for the new domain if not already listed), and add relevant CNAME entries for Godaddy Mail and MX records to point to Godaddy Mail Exchange.
5. Back at your Domain Registrar DNS Management settings change DNS name servers to point to Godaddy and add an A record entry to point to your Godaddy Hosting plan IP address). 

48 hours later - mydomainname.co.uk web site and email now hosted at Godaddy. Send an email to one of the user accounts from an external email to check you can now receive emails in Godaddy.


Migrate email to the Google Apps platform (especially if you don't have free email accounts with your web hosting).

1. Set up Google Apps account for mydomainname.co.uk  - Wait up to 48 hours for domain ownership verification.
2. Create X users to match the email accounts you previously had.
3. In Godaddy DNS Management section of hosting plan settings go to the Domain Zone File for 'yourdomain.co.uk'.  Delete previously entered MX records and add the required ones for Google.
4. Back to Google Apps administration and click Verify MX records - Wait up to 48 hours for this to complete.
5. Delete previously entered CNAME entries and add CNAME entry for 'mail' and point to Google.

Took about 1 hour for me - Email hosted at Google Apps.  Send an email to one of the user accounts from an external email to check you can now receive emails in Google Apps.


So overall the process was a bit painful, and I made a few mistakes along the way.  Godaddy Support Team and Community was helpful, as was LCN.com email Support, but once you get the hang of it, its quite simple. Lol.  Hoping to migrate Silk Trends website and email in the next week or so.  I'll update how it goes.  Wish me luck!

Hope this help you with your switch to new hosting. Happy Migrating!