How to prepare for a migration from a legacy hosting service

There are a couple of things you can do to ensure that the migration goes as smoothly as possible. Here are some things to keep in mind that may potentially affect your service during an upgrade.

Nameservers

This is very important! The nameservers for your domain name need to be updated to point at the new server.

If your domain is registered with VentraIP

You can follow the steps in this guide under “How do I do this?” to point the domain name at the new service.

If your domain name is not registered with VentraIP

If your domain name is registered with another provider, you need to update the domain name’s nameservers on their end. Alternatively, if you’re managing your own DNS zone you can simply update the type A records to your new IP address. To find out what the nameserver addresses or IP address you need are, you can take the following steps after your account has been migrated to a new server:

1. Log in to VIPcontrol.
2. Click on My Services.
3. Click on cPanel Hosting.
4. Click Manage next to the service you want to point your domain name at.
5. Click on Server Details and the nameservers will be listed below Server Name and IP Address.
   • The new IP Address and nameservers will only be listed here after your migration has been confirmed as completed.

From there, you can update the domain name’s Name Servers on your domain registrar’s end. If you want to know what the Name Servers will be before a migration is complete, then you can ask our Technical Support team.

Email Software Settings

Our new servers will only allow you to connect using modern TLS encryption, to meet PCI DSS security standards. Your email software is likely already connecting to using encryption. However, if you’re not sure if that is the case or not, you can follow the below guides on how to enable SSL/TLS in your email software:

• Outlook 2013, 2016 and 2019
• Mac Mail
• Thunderbird
• Outlook for Mac
• Gmail app
• iOS Mail app

Do I need to take a backup?

Backups are always recommended but are not be necessary. If you’d like to take a backup of your service, we have a separate guide on how to do that.

Using FTP

When connecting via FTP, you will need to configure your FTP software to connect securely using TLS encryption. This is easy to do and we have separate guides about how this is done with Filezilla and Cyberduck.