Move from cPanel with your backup file

You move a whole cPanel account with one file: the full backup your cPanel makes. We read only that file. We never log in to your old host or touch it, so it keeps running until you switch. Moving is free; what it makes is charged as it runs, like everything else.

Take Asha. At another host she has ashashop.com (a WooCommerce shop), the addon domain ashabakery.com (plain PHP), 4 mailboxes and a cron job.

1. Make the file at your old host

1. In your old cPanel, open Files, then Backup.

2. Under Full Backup, choose Download a Full Account Backup.

3. Leave Home Directory as where it goes, choose Generate Backup, and download the file when cPanel says it's ready.

Asha gets backup-10.26.2026_09-12-44_asha.tar.gz (3.1 GB). A file your old host made for you, like cpmove-asha.tar.gz, works too. A big account can come as several files ending .part00001, .part00002 and so on: bring them all at once.

2. Bring it here

On your dashboard, open Move from cPanel (on the home page, under New project, or as cPanel backup in a project's Add a service card).

• Upload the file: choose it, or all its parts. It's sent in pieces and shows its speed and the time left. If your connection drops, it carries on by itself; if you close the page, choose the same file again and it carries on from where it stopped.

• Paste a link: put the file on Google Drive or Dropbox, share it so anyone with the link can download it, and paste the link. Any web address the file downloads from works too. You can stop sharing once the move has the file.

A file can be up to 20 GB from the dashboard. For a bigger one, write to support: our team can bring it for you.

3. Check the plan

About two minutes later you see the plan, read from your file. Nothing is made yet. Asha's says:

• 2 projects: ashashop.com (WordPress 6.8, PHP 8.1, its database asha_wp, 420 MB) and ashabakery.com (PHP 7.4, which runs here until 31 December 2027);

• Email: 4 mailboxes (6.2 GB, 38,410 messages), passwords kept: 4 of 4; 3 forwarders, 1 autoresponder, 2 filters;

• DNS records: 14 kept, 9 replaced by ours (addresses, email and certificates);

• Cron jobs: 1, paused until its domain switches, so it never runs on both hosts;

• Can't move: 1 mailing list, and what to do instead;

• what it costs to run a month, at today's prices.

You can leave out anything you don't want with its switch: Asha leaves out an old test subdomain. A database a site uses warns you before you leave it out. You can put a small database on the shared MySQL, which costs less. What the file doesn't say is filled in for you, to change if it's wrong: your old host's time zone (so cron jobs keep their times), the PHP version for sites that used the default, and where your projects run.

If your account has never been topped up, two projects move now and the rest after your first top-up.

Then choose Move it, free.

4. Watch it move

The page counts sites, databases, mailboxes, messages, DNS records and cron jobs as they arrive. You can close it: you get an email and a notice under the bell when it's done.

Each site's files are checked for malware before its free address answers. Settings files are changed to read the new database: WordPress, Laravel, Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop, OpenCart, WHMCS and Magento. The report lists any other file that still names the old database.

Your email waits for one DNS record

To prove the domain is yours, the page shows one TXT record to add at your old host: in cPanel, Domains, then Zone Editor, Manage beside your domain, Add Record, TXT. Copy its name and value with the copy buttons. Once we see it, your mailboxes, forwarders, filters and every message are made here by themselves, before you switch.

5. Look at your sites

The report has each site's free address: Asha opens ashashop-k2m9.tanzahost.co and sees her shop with her products. A WordPress site opens there without sending you to your old address, until you switch.

• Passwords: everyone keeps logging in with the password they have, on their phones and in the webmail at mail.tanzahost.com. A very old kind of password is kept too, with a new one asked within 30 days.

• FTP logins become SFTP logins to the same folders: choose each one's password on the site's Connect card.

• Contacts and calendars arrive in each mailbox as one message, with the files attached: your phone adds them with a tap.

6. Switch, one domain at a time

Open Switch your domains from the report. For each domain:

1. Prove the domain: the TXT record above, if you haven't yet.

2. Lower the TTL (optional): a day before, set your records' TTL to 300 seconds in the Zone Editor, so the change spreads faster.

3. Bring what's new: on the day, make a fresh full backup and choose Bring a newer backup. Only changed and new files, new messages, and new mailboxes, forwarders and records are added. Tick Also replace the databases' data to bring the newest orders, but only if nothing was ordered on the copy here.

4. Change the nameservers at the company you registered the domain with, to ns1.tanzahost.com and ns2.tanzahost.com. If your DNS stays elsewhere, like Cloudflare, the page shows the records to set there instead.

5. Seen here: once our nameservers answer and the certificate works, the domain's cron jobs start and it's Moved. We tell you.

One more backup a day later. For a day or so, some senders still deliver to your old host. Bring one more backup about a day after the switch: only new messages are added. We remind you after 1 day and 7 days. After that, you can cancel your old hosting.

If you change your mind

• Undo the move removes everything the move made. A project you changed since is kept unless you say so.

• Start again reads the same file into a new plan. We keep your file, sealed, for 7 days after the move; Delete the file now deletes it sooner.

• Going back after a switch: the switch page shows the records your domain had at your old host. Point your nameservers back there. Download anything made here first: databases from their Data tab, files from the site's Files, mail with any email app.

What can't move

• Mailing lists (Mailman): make the list again with a mailing-list service, or as a forwarder to several addresses.

• Node.js and Python apps from cPanel's "Setup App" pages: the plan points at their folders; add each as an app from its folder.

• Filters we can't do here (a pipe to a program, failing with a message) are listed in the report.

• Statistics, logs, WebDisk, and add-ons like Softaculous records don't move.

• Your domain's registration stays where it is; see transfer a domain in if you want it here too.