How to Migrate WordPress to Kinsta

Kinsta gives you four ways to move a WordPress site onto its platform, and picking the wrong one costs hours of downtime or, worse, a broken production site. This guide walks through all four, when each makes sense, what to check before you start, and what breaks after the switch if you skip the wrong step.

Which Migration Method Should You Choose?

Every Kinsta plan includes unlimited free migrations. That is unusual across managed hosts and it changes the calculus: for most sites, doing it yourself is the wrong call. Here is how the four options compare.

• Free Kinsta team migration. You fill out a form in MyKinsta. Kinsta engineers move the site, usually within one business day. Right for most people.
• Expedited migration ($49 per site). Same team, but with an eight-hour service level between 9 AM and 11 PM UTC, Monday to Friday. You get a refund if they miss the window. Right for revenue-critical stores that cannot wait a day.
• Migrate Guru plugin (free, DIY). A one-click plugin from BlogVault. Right if you want to keep control of the timing but do not want to touch SFTP.
• Manual migration (SFTP + phpMyAdmin). You handle files and the database yourself. Right if the site is non-standard (Bedrock, custom mu-plugins, unusual database prefixes) or the Kinsta team has quoted extra time.

Some agency plans include expedited credits, so check MyKinsta > Company Settings > Billing before paying the $49.

Before You Start: Pre-Migration Checklist

Skip this section and you will spend the first hour after cutover fixing preventable problems.

• Lower your DNS TTL to 300 seconds at least 24 hours before the cutover. Most guides ignore this. When the record changes, visitors switch to Kinsta in five minutes instead of hours.
• Deactivate caching plugins on the source site. WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, and LiteSpeed Cache all interfere with the file transfer.
• Deactivate any security plugin that firewalls SFTP or logins. Wordfence, Sucuri, and iThemes Security can lock out the Kinsta team mid-migration.
• Note the Kinsta-disallowed plugin list. Kinsta blocks a specific set of plugins on its platform (backup plugins, caching plugins, some proxy plugins) because it handles those tasks at the server level. You will need to remove them after cutover, so list them now.
• Snapshot any Redis or Memcached configuration. Object cache settings do not transfer. Write down your WP_REDIS_HOST or WP_REDIS_PREFIX values so you can rebuild them on Kinsta.
• Confirm the site is standard WordPress. Bedrock, Trellis, and heavily-modified installs need a note to the Kinsta team so they can flag it early.

Option 1: Free Kinsta Team Migration

This is the path Kinsta recommends and it is the one most sites should use.

1. Log in to MyKinsta and go to Sites > Add site.
2. Choose Empty environment, not "Install WordPress." The migration will bring your existing files, so an empty site is required.
3. Once the site is created, open it and click Migrations in the sidebar.
4. Choose Migrate from another host and provide the source hostname, SFTP username, SFTP password, and port. If you have a login for the source hosting control panel, provide that too so the team can pull database exports without your help.
5. Submit the form. You should get a confirmation email within an hour, followed by a completion email inside 24 hours for a standard site.

Option 2: Expedited Migration ($49)

Same process, same team, but Kinsta commits to finishing within eight hours during weekday business hours in UTC. Pick this if:

• You run WooCommerce or a membership site and every hour of downtime costs orders.
• You have a launch or campaign tied to a specific hour.
• Your agency plan already includes expedited credits (check billing first).

Weekend migrations are not available even with expedited service, so plan accordingly.

Option 3: Migrate Guru Plugin (Free)

Migrate Guru is a free plugin from BlogVault that Kinsta officially supports. It runs the entire transfer on BlogVault's servers, so it does not slow down your source site.

1. Install Migrate Guru from the WordPress plugin directory on your source site.
2. Enter an email address and follow the wizard to choose Kinsta as the destination.
3. Grab your Kinsta SFTP credentials from Sites > sitename > Info in MyKinsta.
4. Paste them into Migrate Guru along with the destination directory (leave it as the default /public).
5. Click Migrate and wait. A 5 GB site typically finishes in one to three hours.

Migrate Guru handles URL rewrites automatically, but it will not deactivate disallowed plugins for you. Do that on the source site first.

Option 4: Manual Migration via SFTP and phpMyAdmin

Only pick this if the site is unusual enough that neither the Kinsta team nor Migrate Guru will handle it cleanly.

1. Create an empty environment in MyKinsta, same as Option 1.
2. Download WordPress files from the source via any SFTP client. Grab everything in the WordPress root, including wp-content, wp-includes, and wp-config.php.
3. Export the database. Use phpMyAdmin on the source host, select all tables, and export as SQL.
4. Upload files to Kinsta. Kinsta supports SFTP only (not FTP). Push everything into /public/. The credentials are in MyKinsta at Sites > sitename > Info.
5. Import the database. Open MyKinsta at Sites > sitename > Info > Database access > Open phpMyAdmin. Drop the empty starter tables first, then use Import to load your SQL file.
6. Update wp-config.php. Edit the file via SFTP and replace the database name, username, password, and host with the values from the Kinsta info tab. Keep a backup copy of the original before you save.
7. Test with Site Preview. The Site Preview URL lets you view the site on Kinsta's servers before touching DNS. If something is broken, you can fix it here without visitors seeing anything.

If you run into fatal errors mid-test, turn on debug logging using the guide at how to enable WordPress debug mode in MyKinsta to catch the exact stack trace.

After the Migration: What to Verify

Whichever option you picked, the same checks apply once the site is live on Kinsta.

1. Turn on the Kinsta CDN. It ships with every plan and adds no cost. Follow how to enable the Kinsta CDN on WordPress.
2. Enable Redis object cache if your site is dynamic (WooCommerce, membership, LMS). See how to use Redis object cache on WordPress via Kinsta.
3. Set an APM baseline. Run the Kinsta APM tool for 24 hours so you know what "normal" performance looks like on the new host.
4. Fix mixed content warnings. Old hard-coded HTTP URLs in the database point to insecure resources. Use a search-and-replace plugin like Better Search Replace to swap http://yourdomain.com for https://yourdomain.com.
5. Rebuild cron jobs. Kinsta disables WordPress's built-in cron in favour of a server-side one that fires every 15 minutes. If you rely on more frequent cron events, contact support to adjust.
6. Test WooCommerce checkout and any payment webhooks end-to-end. Session data does not carry over from the source, so mid-checkout carts break.

Common Migration Problems and Fixes

• "Disallowed plugin detected" errors. Kinsta blocks plugins that duplicate its server-level features. Deactivate and delete them from the source before the migration runs.
• SSL errors after DNS switch. If Kinsta issued the Let's Encrypt certificate before you moved DNS, browsers will show a warning until propagation completes. Force-issue a fresh certificate under Tools > HTTPS.
• WP-CLI custom commands fail. Some hosts allow root-level WP-CLI extensions that Kinsta does not. Move any custom commands into an mu-plugin instead.
• Cache misses on Redis. Kinsta uses its own object cache setup. Do not carry over object-cache.php drop-ins from the old host. Kinsta's Redis add-on installs the correct file.
• Missing images after cutover. If your source host stored uploads outside wp-content/uploads, the manual migration will not catch them. Grep wp_options for a custom upload path before you export.

Migration is one half of getting started on Kinsta. The other half (account creation, DNS, initial site settings) is covered in the Kinsta setup and migration guide. For the broader picture of what Kinsta offers, its pricing, and whether it fits your project, the Kinsta hosting guide lays out plans, features, and the trade-offs against other managed hosts. The full write-up of speed testing and support quality is in the Kinsta review, and every step in this article assumes you already have an active Kinsta account. Sign up for Kinsta here if you have not yet.