Your move to Tanzahost Cloud

If you got an email with a move date, this guide is for you. We move your hosting account to Tanzahost Cloud ourselves: your sites, their databases and your mailboxes. You don't download or upload anything, and you can keep working until the day.

Take Asha: her shop asha.example runs on her cPanel account today. She got an email saying her move is on Tuesday 10 November. Here is what happens.

Before the day: a copy, checked

A few days before her date, we make a copy of Asha's account on Tanzahost Cloud, on a free address of its own. Her real shop stays exactly where it is, and her visitors see nothing.

On that copy we:

• correct what differs between the two kinds of hosting, like folder paths inside her settings files (/home/asha/public_html becomes the new site's folder) and the PHP settings her .htaccess file set;

• scan every file for malware. A copy with malware never goes live: we write to Asha first;

• open her pages side by side with the real shop, send her forms where it's safe to, and try her login pages with a wrong password, to see they answer as they should;

• check her email arrives in the new mailboxes.

Anything that doesn't match is fixed, and checked again, before the day. If we need something from Asha, our support team writes to her.

Three days before, we also shorten how long the internet remembers her addresses. That's why the switch on the day takes minutes rather than hours.

On the day: a short pause

On the day we copy the last changes. While that runs, Asha's shop shows a short "Back in a few minutes" page, so no order is taken on the old copy that the new one would miss. The pause is usually about 15 minutes: the email we send says how long.

Then her domain points at Tanzahost Cloud, and her shop opens there. We write to her when it's done.

• Visitors who still reach the old address for a little while are passed on to the new site for 7 days, so nobody lands on an old page.

• Email that still reaches the old mailboxes in those 7 days is copied over to the new ones.

• The old account is kept, untouched, for a few weeks after the move.

If something isn't right

If something on the new site doesn't work as it did, open a ticket from the dashboard. During the days around your move our support team watches your account first.

If a problem can't be fixed quickly, we move you back: every order, sign-up and message made on the new site is copied back to your old account first, then your domain points at the old account again. You'd lose nothing, and we'd agree a new date with you.

Your new dashboard

Once moved, you log in to your dashboard with the email address our move emails went to. Asha opens it and sees her project with her shop in it.

• Your site shows whether it's running, its visits, its logs and its PHP settings. Its File manager edits any file, from a laptop or a phone.

• Your databases show their size and their backups, and open in our own database manager.

• Domains show your domain and its DNS records. Changing a record works as in cPanel's Zone Editor.

• Email lists your mailboxes, their forwarding and auto-replies.

Adding something new, like a second site, is the Add a service card in the project. See PHP sites.

Webmail

You read and write mail in your browser at mail.tanzahost.com. Log in with your full email address, like asha@asha.example, and its password. The mailbox's folders and messages came with it.

Email on your phone

Most phones and Outlook set themselves up from your email address alone:

1. On your phone, add an email account and type your full email address.

2. When it asks for a password, use an app password: in your dashboard, open Email, choose the mailbox, then make its app password and copy it into your phone.

3. If your phone asks which kind of account, choose IMAP.

An app password is only for your phone and mail apps. If you lose the phone, make a new one in the dashboard: the old one stops working at once.

Your wallet

Tanzahost Cloud is paid from a wallet: you top it up with a card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, and your services are charged from it by the hour, for what they use. The email with your move date shows what your account would cost a month.

• Top up in the dashboard's Wallet, in US dollars, or save a card there to pay monthly.

• We email you before your balance runs low, and again if it runs out. Your services keep running for a grace period after that.

• You can set a spending cap for the month.

See Wallet and top-ups and Spending cap.

Questions people ask

Do my passwords change? Your sites' own logins, like WordPress's, don't change: they move with the site. Your phone needs the new app password above.

Can I choose another date? Yes. Tell our support team before your date, and we'll pick one that suits you. We email you the new one.

Do I need to change anything at my domain registrar? Usually not: we change the records for you. If your domain's records are kept somewhere else, like Cloudflare, we tell you exactly which records to change, and when.