Website migration services - what they are, what they cost, and what a good one protects…

What a migration service actually moves

Moving the files is the simple part. Any competent supplier can put your pages on a new host.

What you are really paying for is everything attached to those pages that does not travel automatically:

• The addresses. Every page lives at a specific address. People have bookmarked them and other sites link to them.
• The titles and the words. How a search engine understands what each page is for.
• The standing. Years of being found, filed by address, none of which is stored in your files.
• The working parts. Contact forms that actually arrive, the certificate, the redirects that already existed.
• Your web address and email. Which should not move at all, and should not change hands.

A migration that copies files and leaves the rest to chance is the cheap version, and it is cheap because the expensive part was skipped.

The five things a careful move protects

This is the whole discipline, and it is the same whoever does the work:

1. Keep your web address. It is where everything a search engine knows about you is filed. Anyone who wants ownership of it, or wants to park you on an address of theirs, is asking for the one thing that is genuinely hard to get back.
2. Keep the page addresses, or forward them. If a page lived at slash-services before, it lives there after. Where an address must change, the old one forwards permanently, which both lands the visitor and passes the old address's standing to the new one.
3. Keep the titles. Rewriting them mid-move is changing your name in the middle of an introduction. Improving them is real work and worth doing, separately, after the move settles.
4. Account for every page. List them before, check the list after. Each page either kept its address, forwards to a new one, or was dropped on purpose and you know why.
5. Tell the search engines, then be patient. Expect a wobble while they recheck address by address, and judge it over weeks rather than days.

The longer version of each, with the reasoning, is in How to move your website without losing your Google rankings.

How migrations are priced

Three arrangements, and the difference is what happens in the fortnight afterwards.

A fixed fee for the move. Easiest to compare, and the usual shape for a small site. Ask what is included afterwards, because the first fortnight is when the problems surface.

Hourly. Fine for a simple job, and open-ended on a complicated one. A site with a shop, a members area or a booking system is not a simple job.

Included in an ongoing plan. The move costs nothing separately because the supplier expects to keep the site afterwards. It removes the awkward incentive in a one-off move, where nobody is around when the wobble happens.

Whichever shape, ask what happens if a page goes missing three weeks later. The answer tells you more than the price does.

What to ask before you hand over a site

• Who writes the list of pages, and can I see it? If nobody made one, nobody can check the move.
• What happens to addresses that have to change? The words you want to hear are permanent forwarding, not "we will set up a homepage redirect".
• Whose name is the web address in afterwards? Yours. Always yours.
• What is not being moved? There is usually something. It should be a decision, not a surprise.
• What does the first month look like? Somebody should be watching, and it should be clear who.

When you should not pay for a migration

If your site is a handful of pages you built yourself last year, has no meaningful search history and nothing links to it, the careful version is buying protection for something that does not exist yet. Move it yourself, or rebuild it where you want it and keep the address.

The protection is worth paying for when the site is known: when it has been up for years, when people find it by searching, when other sites link to it. That is when a careless move costs real money and a careful one is quietly worth several times its fee.

How bernard does it

bernard is the third arrangement, deliberately. The move is included with the annual plan rather than sold separately, because he expects to keep the site afterwards and be there when it settles.

He measures up first, free, and shows you the new place before anything is decided. As he packs he writes down every page, its address and its title, keeps the addresses working, and carries the titles across with the furniture. Your web address and your email stay in your own name throughout. The price starts at £200 a year for a simple site with the move included, with larger arrangements above it at £500 and £1,000 a year for sites that need more. Whichever one fits, it is a flat price: what you see is what you pay, with nothing added at the checkout.

A members area, a community room and a shop are part of what he builds, not extras he sends you elsewhere for. And he is honest about his limits: he cannot measure a site that sits behind a password, and a very large site or catalogue can still be more than one trip. He tells you which at the measuring-up, before any money changes hands. None of this is a promise about rankings. Be wary of anyone who makes you one.

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Paste your current address and bernard will measure up, free, and show you the new place before you decide anything.