When you compare WordPress against other platforms for building Web sites, one of the more important features is that there are literally thousands of options for hosting sites. If you find the current WordPress host isn’t meeting your needs, you can move the sites to a host that does provide what you need. I’m going to share how we recently moved a block of our own sites and those of clients from one host to another.

WP Engine

Five years ago we chose WP Engine for our own sites and for client sites we host through our WordPress Gold and Platinum Care Plans. We purchased a block of site hosting at WP Engine and we have paid a year at a time to get the best pricing. At the time this decision was made, WP Engine was considered one of the premier WordPress hosting options.

Over time we became frustrated with the speed of their servers and occasional downtime due to server errors. Because we paid a year at a time and moving a number of sites would be a major project, we started looking for a better hosting provider over a year ago. By late summer, we felt we had found a great option and the plans started to be put in place for the migration.

Then in September, all hell broke loose when Matt Mullenweg started a war with WP Engine. Soon after the war started, we experienced some issues on our WP Engine sites because they weren’t able to update plugins and themes hosted in the WordPress repository. Not to mention the attempted theft of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin. Thankfully the courts stepped in and solved the WordPress repository problem as well as blocking Mullenweg’s theft of ACF. While this solved things for now, things could certainly change again and we want to part of it.

This craziness solidified our plan to move away from WP Engine. It also meant we wouldn’t even consider any hosting offered at WordPress.com, Pressable or WordPress VIP since they are controlled by Matt Mullenweg. We preferred to find a smaller company that is outside of the drama while providing powerful hosting at reasonable costs.

Bigframe Digital

Our search led us to Bigframe Digital. We heard the opinions of WordPress pros we trust and also directly asked a series of questions to the team at Bigframe Digital to verify they were the right choice for us. Before I go any further, I’ll disclose that the links provided to Bigframe Digital are affiliate links for which we’ll receive a small commission. While you can directly sign up with them, I’d encourage you to consider our Gold and Platinum WordPress Care Plans that include hosting with them and much more.

We worked with Alex Vojacek at Bigframe Digital to develop a migration plan that would make the process as smooth as possible. With any migration, the DNS settings need to be changed from the old server to the new server. This process can be fraught with problems depending on where the DNS settings are stored. Alex suggested we move the nameservers for all domains to Cloudflare. There are paid plans at Cloudflare, but they also offer a free plan that is extremely powerful.

Moving the nameservers for our own domains was very easy and there was no site downtime at all. We then worked with each of our clients to get their nameservers migrated. On each domain controlled by Cloudflare, we put in firewall rules based on the Web Agency Hero Cloudflare WAF Rules V3. There were a few other settings we adjusted to provide the best combination of speed and security. A huge benefit of having nameservers at Cloudflare is that you also have access to their Content Delivery Network (CDN) at no extra charge.

The Migration

We purchased a hosting plan in early January 2025 and started migration of sites almost immediately. Rather than trying to do them all at once, we felt it was better to do 2-3 at a time. This allowed the sites to be migrated at off hours and then to be tested after migration to verify all was working well. The first sites migrated were smaller sites that don’t change often. Once those were completed, we moved on to ecommerce sites where any downtime can be a problem. After a month, all sites have been migrated and we have given 30 days notice to WP Engine that we wish to cancel hosting with them.

I’d love to say the process was flawless. It wasn’t. We did discover some weird issues with some of the sites after migration. After researching, we found that none of the issues were with the migration itself. One that affected several sites was due to a security setting at Cloudflare that was blocking some JavaScript from properly loading. A quick change to those settings solved the problem immediately. The most frustrating problem came from shipping software used by an ecommerce site that did some things in a non-standard way which caused security settings on the Web servers to completely block it. Getting the shipping software to behave properly could take a lot of time so instead the security settings on the server were adjusted to allow just that software to access the ecommerce store.

In Closing

I am thrilled to have our hosting at WP Engine done. The last few months there were very problematic. It was been an absolute joy to work with Alex at Bigframe Digital and I have no doubt we’ll purchase more hosting with them in the future. Our sites are so much faster on the new servers. And should issues arise (they always do), I have full confidence that Bigframe Digital will work with us to get them resolved in a timely manner.