When a hosting company is sold, the buyer usually moves every customer onto its own servers. That forced migration is where sites break. One developer's host, LFC, was bought by HostPapa. His account was moved for him, his client sites went down for six days, and support gave him wrong answers or no answer at all.
What happened when HostPapa took over the developer's hosting?
The developer had his client sites on a small host called LFC. HostPapa bought LFC. Then his whole account was moved to HostPapa's servers on a schedule he did not set. After the move, his client sites stopped loading, and they stayed down for six days.
The part that hurt most was the support. In his telling, he opened tickets and waited. Some replies told him things that turned out to be wrong, so he spent hours chasing fixes that went nowhere. Other tickets sat with no reply at all. Meanwhile his clients were calling him, because to them he was the web person. They didn't know or care who LFC was.
We can't check every detail of one stranger's story, and HostPapa might tell it a different way. Still, the shape of it is something we see over and over. A host gets bought. Accounts get moved in bulk. The new support team has never seen your setup, and the old team that knew it is gone or busy. You're left in the middle with clients who want answers today.
If you run sites for clients, six days is a long time. It's long enough for a client to start shopping for a new developer.
Why do hosting acquisitions lead to forced migrations?
A company that buys a host wants one set of servers, one billing system and one support desk. Running two of everything costs money. So the buyer moves the old customers onto its own platform, usually in large batches, and usually on a timeline built around the buyer's costs instead of your calendar.
This is a normal part of the hosting business. Newfold Digital (formerly Endurance International Group) owns Bluehost, HostGator and a long list of other brands that were once separate companies. WP Engine bought Flywheel, and we wrote about how that played out for customers in what changed at Flywheel after the WP Engine acquisition. Small hosts get bought, or they close. When they close, the outcome can be worse, as in the story of hosts that shut down and took customer sites with them.
A bulk move is risky because each account is a little different. Your site might need an older PHP version, a custom redirect rule or a cron job you set up three years ago. A migration script built to move ten thousand accounts won't know about any of that. It copies the files and the database, flips a switch, and moves to the next account.
The cost of getting it wrong is high. According to Uptime Institute's 2022 Outage Analysis, over 60% of outages cost at least $100,000, up from 39% in 2019. Those figures come from larger companies. For a small business site the dollar amount is smaller, but the pattern holds, and our breakdown of what website downtime costs per minute puts real numbers on it.
What does a forced hosting migration break?
A forced migration breaks anything that lived outside the files and database. That means DNS records, email settings, SSL certificates, server versions and scheduled jobs. The site files may arrive fine, but the pieces around them don't always come along. Here is what we check first when a client arrives after a bad move.
| What breaks | What you see | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| DNS records | Site points to an old or empty server | Look up the domain's A record and compare it to the new server IP |
| Email records (MX, SPF, DKIM) | Mail bounces or lands in spam | Send a test email and read the headers |
| SSL certificate | Browser shows a "not secure" warning | Load the site over https and check the certificate date |
| PHP version | White screen or 500 error | Check the PHP version on the new server against what the site ran before |
| Rewrite rules | Every page but the homepage returns 404 | Click any inner page; see our fix for NGINX returning 404 on WordPress permalinks |
| Cron jobs | Scheduled posts, backups and emails stop | Look at the server cron list and WordPress scheduled events |
| File ownership | Uploads fail, plugins can't update | Try uploading an image in the media library |
| IP allowlists | Payment or API calls get blocked | Check any service that only trusts certain server IPs |
| Backup history | Old restore points are gone | Ask the new host which backups moved over, if any |
Most of these fail at the same moment the switch flips. That's why a forced migration can feel like everything broke at once. Usually it's three or four separate problems stacked on top of each other, and a support agent who fixes one may tell you the job is done while the other three are still broken.
DNS causes more confusion than anything else on this list. If you want the plain version of how records, nameservers and TTL work, our DNS guide for WordPress site owners walks through it.
How fast should hosting support answer during an outage?
During an outage, you need a person who can look at your server and tell you what's wrong within a few hours. Days is far too slow. If your host can't promise a response time in writing, you have no way to know whether a ticket will be read today or next week.
The developer's six days is an extreme case, but slow support is common. One of our own clients lived a smaller version of it. Bellhaven Law, a small law firm, was relying on a freelancer who took days to answer. On TopSyde, a senior developer now answers in under two hours. For a law firm, a contact form that stops working for a few days means missed calls from people who need a lawyer this week.
Response time matters most when something is broken and you don't know why. That's exactly the moment a support team new to your account will guess. A guess sounds like an answer, so you spend an afternoon on it before you find out it was wrong. That waste is a big part of why developers end up hating cheap hosting.
According to ITIC's 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime survey, more than 90% of mid-size and large firms say a single hour of downtime costs them over $300,000. You don't need to be that size to feel it. Six days of downtime on a client site is 144 hours of lost leads, lost sales and lost trust.
Our support promise is written down on the TopSyde service level agreement page: under 2 hours during business hours for a human reply, with monitoring that watches your sites 24/7. Monitoring catches the outage. A person then picks up the ticket.
How TopSyde handles a WordPress migration
We move one site at a time and test it on our servers before anyone's DNS changes. The old site keeps running at the old host while we check it. We only switch traffic once the copy works, and we keep the old copy until you confirm everything is right.
That order of steps is the main difference from a bulk forced move. In a bulk move, the switch happens first and the testing happens after, if it happens at all. Here's what our process looks like:
- We copy the files and database to our servers and load the site on a temporary address.
- We match the PHP version and check plugins, forms, checkout and logins on the copy.
- We note every DNS and email record before touching anything, so mail keeps flowing.
- We lower the DNS TTL ahead of the switch so the change spreads fast.
- We switch DNS, check the live site again, and keep the old host as a fallback until you sign off.
If you want to run a move yourself, our guide to migrating a WordPress site without breaking it covers the same steps in more detail. If you're comparing hosts before you move, our WordPress hosting comparison of WP Engine, Kinsta, Flywheel and TopSyde lays out support, price and features side by side.
What you get after the move matters too. Managed hosting means the host takes on updates, backups, security and speed work, which we explain in what managed WordPress hosting covers in 2026. Plans start at $89/mo per site, and the pricing page lists what each one includes. Agencies moving many client sites at once can start with the TopSyde page for agencies.
Questions to ask before your web host is bought
You can't stop a sale, but you can find out early how exposed you are. These questions work whether your host has announced a deal or you're just worried it might. Ask them in writing, and save the replies.
- Will my account be moved to new servers, and on what date?
- Can I choose my migration window, or at least delay it?
- Will my PHP version, cron jobs and custom server settings carry over?
- Who updates my DNS, and will email records (MX, SPF, DKIM) be moved too?
- Will my SSL certificates be reissued before or after the switch?
- Which backups move with my account, and how far back do they go?
- What response time is promised in writing during the migration?
- If a site breaks after the move, can I roll back to the old server?
- Will my price change at the next renewal under the new owner?
If the answers are vague, take that as your answer. A host with a careful plan can tell you the date, the steps and the rollback option. Our list of signs it's time to switch WordPress hosts covers other warnings worth watching.
Whatever the answers are, keep your own backups somewhere the host doesn't control. One agency owner learned this the hard way when a host's support team wiped every client site on his server. A copy in your own cloud storage is the only backup a sale, a shutdown or a support mistake can't touch.
What to do if your host is migrating you right now
If your host has already scheduled a move, your goal is to make sure you can recover without them. Take a full backup now, write down every setting, and test your sites the hour the switch happens. Don't wait for the host to tell you something broke.
- Take a full backup today. Download the files and a database export for every site and store them off the host. Our WordPress backup strategy guide explains what a full backup has to include.
- Screenshot your DNS zone. Save every A, CNAME, MX and TXT record so you can rebuild them if they vanish.
- Write down the server details. Note the PHP version, cron jobs, redirect rules and any IP allowlists with payment or API providers.
- Warn your clients. Tell them the date and that you'll be watching. A heads-up beats a panicked phone call.
- Test right after the switch. Load inner pages, submit a form, send a test email and run a test checkout.
- Keep a way out. If support goes quiet for more than a day, you have backups and records, so you can restore on another host instead of waiting.
That last step is the one the developer in this story didn't have ready. With a recent backup and a saved DNS zone, a move to a new host can take hours. Without them, you wait on the people who broke it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is HostPapa a bad web host?
One developer's account of a forced migration is not a full verdict on any company. What it shows is how much risk sits in a bulk migration after an acquisition, and how much support response time matters when things go wrong. Judge any host by its written response time, its migration process and how it handles your backups.
Can a web host move my site to new servers without asking me?
Usually yes. Most hosting terms of service let the provider change the servers your account runs on, and that right passes to a buyer when the company is sold. You can often ask for a different migration date, so request it in writing as soon as you hear about the move.
How long should a WordPress migration take?
A careful migration of a single site usually means minutes of real downtime, because the site is copied and tested before DNS is switched. DNS changes can take a few hours to spread, less if the TTL was lowered first. Several days of downtime points to a process that switched first and tested later.
What breaks most often after a host migration?
DNS records, email settings and PHP version mismatches cause most of the trouble. SSL certificates, cron jobs and permalink rules are next. Checking each of these within an hour of the switch catches most problems before your clients notice.
How does TopSyde support compare during a migration?
TopSyde support answers in under 2 hours during business hours, and monitoring runs 24/7. We test each site on our servers before switching DNS and keep the old copy until you confirm the move. Plans start at $89/mo per site.
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DevOps & Security Lead
12+ years DevOps, Linux & cloud infrastructure certified
Marcus leads infrastructure and security at TopSyde, managing the server fleet and AI monitoring systems that keep client sites fast and protected. Former sysadmin turned WordPress hosting specialist.
