Migrate your WordPress website for free with UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus has long been the world’s most popular WordPress backup plugin according to our number of active installations.
Tens of thousands of WordPress users have also relied on UpdraftPlus to migrate their WordPress websites to another URL or hosting company.
Until recently, customers had to purchase UpdraftMigrator as an add-on to the free plugin or the bundled UpdraftPlus Premium plugin to benefit from migration features.
UpdraftPlus release 1.23.8 changes all of that. Migration is now free!
All users can now migrate their WordPress websites using the free UpdraftPlus plugin.
UpdraftPlus free vs premium
We’ve reserved some migration features for the premium (i.e. paid) product.
To migrate with free UpdraftPlus, you must download your backups from the source site and then upload / restore these into the destination site.
Only customers with UpdraftMigrator / UpdraftPlus:
- Can pick and choose which themes, plugins and database tables to migrate.
- Get Premium support. We can do more to support your migration than is allowed under WordPress forum guidelines e.g. we can look at your server configuration or access your site to diagnose issues.
- Can migrate a normal WordPress site into a subsite of a multisite.
Premium is also a better option for users who regularly migrate between the same two WordPress websites e.g. if frequently updating a sandbox to reflect the live site or vice versa. Connect the sites once then migrate in a matter of clicks.
With UpdraftPlus Premium you also get premium backup features including the ability to take incremental backups, automatic backups before updates, more remote storage locations including Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, SFTP, WebDAV and more.
So what does the free UpdraftPlus plugin do in respect to migration?
You can migrate your WordPress website in the free plugin by taking a backup in the source site, and then uploading/restoring this in the destination site.
As with premium, the free version includes a built-in ‘search-and-replace’ engine which identifies old references, replacing these with the new ones, reducing the chances of missing files or broken links.
Both versions also perform various ‘behind the scenes’ clean-up tasks, maintaining compatibility with other plugins and things of that sort (our aim is never to have any “the free version leaves things broken if you’re using this-or-that plugin and you must pay to not have things broken!” situations).
Migrating your WordPress website with the free or premium plugins, takes minutes.
For a detailed explanation of the differences, visit our updated step-by-step WordPress migration guide.
Why the change?
We want to bring migration to more of our customer base whilst providing an upgrade path to customers with additional migration needs.
Next steps
Get the free UpdraftPlus plugin now, from the WordPress directory or upgrade to UpdraftPlus Premium to benefit from premium migration and premium backup features.
Frequently Asked Questions
I’ve just bought UpdraftMigrator as an add-on to the free product. Do I still need it?
That depends on your needs.
If you need to migrate some themes, plugins and database tables whilst leaving out others, you’ll continue to need UpdraftMigrator or UpdraftPlus Premium.
If migrating a normal WordPress into a multisite network you’ll also need UpdraftMigrator or UpdraftPlus Premium.
Our team can also offer more support with Premium than is allowed via free support in the WordPress forums. We can do things like take a copy of your site (minus the user data) to replicate any errors you may be experiencing or access your server configuration.
Another advantage of the premium options (UpdraftMigrator or UpdraftPlus Premium) is you only need to connect two sites once to then make multiple migrations in just a few clicks.
For additional questions, please contact Support.
