Move From HostGator To Liberation
When you move from HostGator, a person moves your site and mailboxes, tests everything before it goes live, and schedules the cutover around your schedule, not ours.
How the move from HostGator works
We handle each step so you can keep working.
Manage your hosting in cPanel
The control panel most site owners already know: files, backups, databases, email, domains and security in one place.
The short answer
Moving off HostGator means two things: the website (files, database, DNS) and, if you use it, HostGator email (mailboxes, contacts, calendar). Both move as part of one free migration, handled by a person on our team rather than a self-service import tool.
When you move from HostGator to Liberation, the goal is a HostGator migration you never have to think about twice: the same pages, the same design, the same functionality, just running on infrastructure that isn’t tied to HostGator’s renewal pricing or upsell-heavy checkout flow. A move from HostGator is different from a plugin-based import — we rebuild the hosting environment properly, test every form, plugin, and email account against the live HostGator site, and only point your domain over once everything checks out.
Business owners who move from HostGator often ask how long the HostGator migration takes and whether anything will break in the process. In most cases a single-site HostGator migration wraps up within a few business days of approving the plan, and because your original HostGator site stays live and untouched throughout, there’s no window where your business is offline. If you’re comparing whether to move from HostGator now or wait, the practical answer is that the HostGator migration only gets more involved the longer content keeps accumulating on the old site.
Most single-site migrations complete within a few business days of you approving the plan, with a scheduled cutover window so there’s no unexpected downtime.
Larger sites with more content or custom functionality can take a bit longer, but every HostGator migration follows the same structured process: a full inventory of the HostGator site, a rebuild on Liberation’s servers, a side-by-side check against the original, and then a DNS cutover scheduled for a low-traffic window you choose. Because the goal is a HostGator migration with zero surprises, we don’t rush the testing phase even on simple sites — every form submission, every plugin, and every page template gets verified before the move from HostGator is considered finished.
What actually happens
We copy, we don't cut over yet
Your HostGator site stays live and untouched while we build the copy on Liberation’s servers.
We test on our servers first
The migrated copy is checked against the live HostGator site — pages, forms, plugins, email — before anything is pointed at it.
We schedule the cutover with you
DNS changes happen at a time you choose, and we monitor for propagation issues after the switch.
You keep your domain name and, if you’re moving HostGator email too, your existing addresses — nothing changes for the people emailing you or visiting your site.
- Free migration no setup fee, no migration fee, no surprise line on the first invoice.
- No downtime cutover DNS changes are scheduled and monitored, not left to chance.
- U.S.-owned infrastructure and support, not outsourced overseas.
Why teams leave HostGator
The most common reasons: renewal price jumps after the first term, upsells inside the checkout flow, and hosting performance that doesn’t scale well once traffic grows. See the full price comparison on our HostGator Alternative page if that’s what’s driving the move.
What moves, what doesn't have to
WordPress sites
Files, database, plugins and themes move as-is; we flag anything incompatible with our servers before the cutover, not after.
HostGator email
Mailboxes, contacts and calendar entries move to Liberation Email or Hub for Teams, your choice.
Domain registration
You can keep your domain registered at HostGator and just point it at us, or transfer registration too — either works.
- WordPress hosting from $35/month.
- Liberation Email $1.95/user/month.
- Free migration included with any plan switch.
Priced the way a business buys
Starting prices, billed monthly. Migration itself is free regardless of which plan you choose.
- WordPress hosting from $35/month.
- Liberation Email $1.95/user/month.
- Hub for Teams $7.49/user/month.
What It Costs
Starting prices, billed monthly unless noted. Anything larger gets a written quote.
Step-by-step: find your HostGator DNS records and switch them to Liberation
We copy, we don't cut over yet
- Log in to your HostGator Customer Portal and open cPanel for your hosting account.
- In cPanel, find Zone Editor under Domains and select your domain to view its current DNS records (A, MX, CNAME).
- Note your existing MX records before anything changes, especially if HostGator also hosts your email.
- Once your new site and mailboxes are built and tested on Liberation, we send you the new nameservers or the specific records to publish — HostGator’s nameserver settings live in the same portal, or at your registrar if you bought the domain elsewhere.
- Save and confirm the change. DNS updates typically show within a few hours, up to 48 hours for full worldwide propagation, and we keep both old and new mail flowing during that window.
We test on our servers first
The migrated copy is checked against the live HostGator site — pages, forms, plugins, email — before anything is pointed at it.
We schedule the cutover with you
DNS changes happen at a time you choose, and we monitor for propagation issues after the switch.
You keep your domain name and, if you’re moving HostGator email too, your existing addresses — nothing changes for the people emailing you or visiting your site.
See a migrated site in action
Scroll through a real site hosted on our platform.
Open the live demo siteLeaving HostGator: your export steps
What the vendor documents for getting your data out, in order.
Common questions
Will my site go down during the move?
No — your HostGator site stays live while we build and test the copy, and the DNS cutover is scheduled and monitored.
Do I have to move my domain registration too?
No. You can keep your domain registered at HostGator and simply point it at Liberation’s servers.
What if I use HostGator's website builder, not WordPress?
Tell us what you’re running when you book a call — when you move from HostGator’s website builder rather than WordPress, migrations are handled case by case since there’s no standard export format. For reference, HostGator’s own backup documentation outlines what a self-service export would and wouldn’t carry over.
Is the migration really free?
Yes, for a standard site and mailbox migration, regardless of which plan you choose.
Do I need technical skills to move from HostGator?
Yes. When you move from HostGator to Liberation, our team handles the entire HostGator migration for you — you don’t need any technical experience, and your current site stays live and untouched until the new one is tested and ready.
Is HostGator migration really free with any plan?
Yes. The HostGator migration itself is completely free no matter which HostGator plan you’re on — shared, VPS, or dedicated. When you move from HostGator to Liberation, we cover the entire HostGator migration cost, including moving your email, so the only thing you pay for is your new WordPress hosting going forward.
What happens to my HostGator email during the migration?
Your HostGator email moves right alongside the site as part of the same HostGator migration. Mailboxes, contacts, and calendar entries are copied over to Liberation, and we schedule the mail-server cutover for the same low-traffic window as the website switch, so you don’t lose incoming messages during the move from HostGator.
Ready to leave HostGator?
Book a call and tell us what you’re running — we’ll give you a migration timeline and a written quote, no obligation.
What actually makes leaving HostGator hard
Mechanically, leaving is easy — standard control panel, standard backup, standard restore. The reason people leave is rarely mechanical, and the thing worth planning for is one nobody mentions at signup: on shared hosting your website’s mail goes out from an IP address shared with hundreds of other sites, and you inherit their sending reputation whether you like it or not.
That shows up as contact form notifications landing in spam, password resets that never arrive, and invoices customers insist they never received. If that is why you are moving, changing hosts alone may not fix it. Website mail belongs on an authenticated sending service with SPF, DKIM and DMARC records published on your own domain, and that is a configuration decision rather than a hosting one. We would rather say so up front than let you move and find the same problem waiting.
Second thing to check is how many separate products you are actually paying for. These accounts tend to sprawl across things bought at different times — a hosting plan, a domain registration, a standalone certificate, a backup add-on — each with its own renewal date, and none of them cancelling because another one did. List them before you cancel anything.
The site copy itself is ordinary: files, a MySQL database, a PHP version, and whatever the .htaccess has accumulated. That redirect history is often the only surviving record of what URLs used to exist on your site, so it travels with the migration rather than being rebuilt from guesswork. Losing it means losing search rankings you have already paid for.
How we handle it: we copy the site and mailboxes, carry the redirect history across deliberately, publish SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain so your mail is actually trusted, and test on a temporary address before DNS changes. Website Migration is included with hosting, email and Hub plans. If you are not on a plan, or you want a one-off move, it is $250. Book a call and we will look at where your mail is currently being sent from.
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