10+ Best WordPress Migration Plugins

Are you looking for the best WordPress migration plugin to safely move your website to a new web host? See our comparison of the best WordPress migration plugins that you can use.

Why Should You Use WordPress Migration Plugins?

Migrating a WordPress installation to a different server can be time-consuming and difficult. You need to move the database, files, plugins, and theme. You also want to reduce downtime, so your users don’t see a broken website. Most importantly, you want to preserve your website’s SEO rankings.

To make sure that all these things go smoothly, you’ll need a WordPress migration plugin to easily manage the transfer. WordPress migration plugins are tools that help website owners transfer their WordPress sites from one host or domain to another. With the following plugins, you can complete the migration process with ease, saving time and effort while ensuring a successful transfer. In this case, the plugin works like a migration tool.

The Best WordPress Migration Plugins

Duplicator

Duplicator is a powerful and user-friendly WordPress migration plugin. With over 1 million active installs and an average rating of 4.9/5. Duplicator Pro provides a comprehensive migration solution.

In particular, Duplicator Pro is one of the plans of Duplicator that provides a step-by-step migration wizard, guiding you through the entire process. This makes it easy even for beginners to migrate their WordPress site to a new host or domain. The plugin also allows you to schedule backups, ensuring your data is always safe. With the option to save backups on remote storage such as Google Drive or Dropbox, you can easily access your backups from anywhere.

Features:

• Drag and Drop installs – just drag an archive to the destination site
  Scheduled backups;
• Cloud Storage to Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon S3, and FTP/SFTP;
• A special 2-step streamlined installer mode for mega-fast installs;
• Recovery Points added for very fast emergency site restores;
• Support for Managed hosts such as WordPress.com, WPEngine, GoDaddy Managed;
• Multi-threaded to support larger websites & databases;
• Migrate an entire multisite WordPress network in one shot;
• Install a multisite subsite as a new standalone website;
• Database and user creation in the installer with cPanel API;
• Connect to cPanel directly from the installer;
• Custom plugin hooks for developers;
• Email notifications;
• Professional support.

Pros:

• Seamless creation of preconfigured sites;
• Direct server transfers for easy migration;
• Enables users to limit the number of backups to save storage;
• Provides email notifications to enable you to detect any backup issues.

Cons:

• A relatively high price for the pro version;
• Gets buggy at some point when working with large websites;
• Required technical skills to upload files via FTP.

Price: Free or the premium plan from $49.50/year.

All-in-One WP Migration

With over 2 million active installs and an average rating of 4.5/5, this plugin allows you to migrate your site easily.

All-in-One WP Migration plugin was designed with the non-technical user in mind, and it comes filled with newbie-friendly functionalities that allow you to migrate your WordPress website with little to no technical expertise or experience.

Features:

• Supports custom uploads, plugins, theme folders, and more;
• Available in over 50 language translations;
• Individuals with disabilities can access it (WCAG 2.1 AA Level compliant);
• No limitations on the host or operating system;
• Supports a wide range of hosting providers;
• A long list of premium extensions that give you additional power;
• Compatible with mobile devices;
• Intelligent and flawless auto-replacement of website URLs during import;
• Full product support;
• Browse WPRESS files online with Traktor Web;
• Extract WPRESS files on your computer with Traktor Desktop.

Pros:

• Easy for non-technical user;
• Safe, reliable, and adaptable;
• Compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes;
• Supports and syncs seamlessly with top cloud storage services such as AWS, Google Compute Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Cons:

• All-in-One Migration plugin use of your source site’s resources to move the copy to the new destination. Depending on your server resources and the size of your site, this process could make your site malfunction even before the migration is complete;
• The free version is limited to the import size of 512 MB;
• It can’t restore the backup from the server.

Price: Free. The premium version is available for $69 for a lifetime.

WP Migrate DB

With over 400,000 active installs and an average rating of 4.7/5, this plugin focuses on migrating your database. It allows you to find and replace URLs, smoothing the migration process.

It creates a copy of the WordPress database and imports it into the new server. Furthermore, it migrates the existing themes and plugins. This plugin replaces old URLs and paths with new ones after migration, so you don't have to manually update them.

WP Migrate DB has two versions: free and pro. The pro version enables you to push and pull databases from one installation to the other with a single click. Besides, it supports backup integration, migration profiles, and much more. The plugin also includes features for pushing and pulling files, themes, and media assets.

Features:

• All the URL paths, file paths, and serialized data can easily be handled in the background;
• Developers get an ironclad way to download and move full databases;
• The pro version enables push and pulls databases;
• The free version supports a number of features that are enough to migrate the data;
• You get the power to exclude certain post types;
• You can find and replace any data;
• One can easily sync full media between two sites;
• It is considered one of the most secure plugins by the developers.

Pros:

• You get the control to migrate and set up site backups;
• The plugin can copy the database from one site to another;
• Powerful features to enhance the migration process;
• A great option for complex and large websites;
• You can easily backup the data before replacing the new one.

Cons:

• It is complex for beginners;
• To access the additional features like – email support and exclude data, you need to purchase the premium version.

Price: Start from $49.

Migrate Guru

Migrate Guru stands out as a top choice due to its impressive range of features. One of the key benefits of using Migrate Guru is its simplicity, making it a user-friendly option for anyone, regardless of their technical expertise. It is powered by BlogVaultWith over 100,000 active installs and an average rating of 5/5, it offers one-click migration to any host.

Features:

• The migration process is fully automated, saving users significant time and effort (One-click migration);
• No overload on-site;
• Built for large sites;
• Don’t need add-ons to move multi-sites, or sites with serialized data;
• No storage space required;
• Compatible with every web host;
• Comfortably handle serialized data with accurate Search&Replace.

Pros:

• It supports almost all popular WordPress hosting providers;
• Easy migration wizard where you just need to enter your destination host’s FTP or cPanel credentials, and the plugin takes care of everything else;
• Migrates your WordPress database updated URLs and handles serialized data;
• It can be used to migrate large websites without affecting server performance.

Cons:

• Doesn’t support localhost to live website or live to localhost transfers;
• Doesn’t fully support multisite migrations.

Price: Free

UpdraftPlus

This popular plugin, UpdraftPlus, has over 2 million active installs and an average rating of 4.8/5. It not only provides backup functionality but also offers migration capabilities for seamless site transfer.

Features:

• UpdraftPlus creates a quick and secure backup for all of your websites. This is all done for free in the core plugin;
• The plugin does both backups and restores. The files can also be moved to other locations manually or by utilizing one of the one-click migration extensions on the website;
• UpdraftPlus has one of the most extended lists of cloud integrations. Some of these include Rackspace Cloud, OpenStack Swift, and Microsoft OneDrive;
• The free version of the plugin has automatic backups, which is often not the case with migration and backup plugins;
• Incremental backups are possible. You can backup and migrate multisite networks. You can move non-WordPress files to other servers;
• The Migration extension helps out with clones and moving files from local to live environments.

Pros:

• Easy to use process. If you already use it as your backup plugin, then you can create a complete backup and import it to any location;
• Schedule and store your WordPress backups in remote locations;
• Works with WordPress multisite networks;
• Incremental backups allow you to save server resources.

Cons:

• To run the migration, you’d need to install WordPress on the destination.

Price: Free. The premium plan starts from $70/year with more advanced features.

BackupBuddy

With over 300,000 active installs and an average rating of 4.3/5, BackupBuddy offers both backup and migration features. It enables you to migrate your site with just a few clicks. It has been around since 2010 and has a loyal customer base.

Features:

• One can clone the WordPress sites in just one click;
• You get great options for pushing and pulling between the staging and live sites;
• Backup Buddy comes with a premium version only, you can bound to get an enhanced customer experience;
• You can build a site on a temporary domain and use the plugin to migrate the data;
• Automatic and scheduled backups with off-site storage;
• Some of the amazing features of backups include – scheduled backups, email notifications, and remote storage;
• You get built-in security scanning features with the plugin;
• You get easy site restoration using the ImportBuddy tool.

Pros:

• Comes with automated scheduled backups, restore, and migration features in one convenient package;
• Set up your backup schedules, choose what to back up, and store them in remote locations such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more;
• Easily transfer your website using a complete WordPress backup;
• It can deploy a WordPress staging site to a live server with 1-click.

Cons:

• Doesn’t support WordPress multisite for the basic plan;
• Restore and migration features are not as easy for beginners as other plugins on this list.

Price: Starting from $99 / year for a single site license. The premium plan has more advanced features.

Jetpack (VaultPress)

Jetpack is a massive WordPress plugin suite with a powerful backup feature. This feature was previously called VaultPress and was sold as a separate product.

Now it is included as JetPack Backups. It allows you to easily restore your WordPress backups and migrate your website to new servers.

Features:

• It’s a premium plugin with quality customer support;
• The plugin is included with the Jetpack plugin, so you’ll also get a full suite of tools for social media, marketing, and more;
• VaultPress has support for automated and scheduled backups;
• You receive unlimited storage space for all of your backups;
• An archive is shown for 30 days;
• The plugin includes a simple, intuitive migration button that takes your backups and either restores them to your site or sends them to other servers;
• VaultPress offers spam protection to prevent the wide array of comments and pingbacks that are bound to come in through your site;
• The plugin keeps an eye on brute force attacks with constant monitoring;
• The Business plans include some impressive features for things like security scanning, ad revenue generation, and unlimited video hosting.

Pros:

• The easiest way to make WordPress backups and easily restore them to a new location;
• Incremental backups save server resources;
• The easy 1-click site restoration feature makes migrations a breeze;
• All your data is stored in the cloud, and you don’t need to manually re-upload backups during migration;
• Includes site security features that make your backups secure.

Cons:

• You will need a JetPack subscription with many other features you may not even need or use;
• The setup process is a bit complicated for beginners. You will need two plugins, a Jetpack subscription, and a WordPress.com account.

Price: Starts from $39/year

Backup Guard

Backup Guard handles backups, migrations, and file restoration. It’s not as popular as some of the competition, but the feature set is impressive, and the clean interface appeals to many users.

Features:

• Backup Guard includes a full suite of tools for things like migrations, security, backups, and restores;
• The support is great. Emergency support is available at all hours;
• You can specify however many backups you would like to keep on your server;
• All of the plans allow for unlimited backups, sites, and migrations;
• Multisite networks are supported when it comes to migrations and backups;
• You get to decide which of the tables from your databases are backed up and used during migration;
• There’s no need to get an FTP client when importing your backups;
• Email notifications are sent out whenever a backup is completed or when a migration is done.

Pros:

• Automates scheduled backups;
• Backup Guard is fast and easy;
• You will get integration with cloud services;
• Fast and reliable solution for backing up cloud services.

Cons:

• There are no real-time backups;
• Backup Guard doesn’t offer manual restoration;
• There is no offsite storage.

Price: $25/year or more.

Super Backup & Clone

This plugin has over 500,000 active installs and an average rating of 4.6/5. It offers complete backups and clone functionality, making it easier to migrate your site to a new location.

Features:

• Super Backup & Clone takes “snapshots” of your files, which is basically downloading and saving your site files in various locations. These snapshots are used for migrations;
• The cloud connections, like Google Drive and Dropbox, ensure that all of your folders are stored elsewhere, improving your file security;
• History revisions are shown on the dashboard, just in case you’d like to restore your site or make a migration from a version from the past;
• Backups can be scheduled and automated for a streamlined process;
• You can exclude certain files and folders from your backups;
• You can choose which tables you would like to backup from your database. Select all of them or just a few;
• The multisite capabilities allow network owners to completely migrate their network sites or restore from backups.

Pros:

• This plugin supports WordPress Multisite migrations;
• The interface is very user-friendly;
• Keep all the statistics related to your backups in one place;
• Supports multiple cloud backup destinations;
• The dashboard shows a bird’s eye view of the existing backup instances.

Cons:

• No free version or free trial is available for testing the plugin before you buy it;
• Customer support appears to be lacking at times.

Price: $35 for a single site.

WPVivid

WPVivid is an all-in-one WordPress backup, restore, and migration plugin to save WordPress websites from the potential threat of data loss. It’s suitable for all types of websites from small businesses to large eCommerce stores.

Automatic or manual backup is possible to save website files and databases on cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon S3, etc., or download it to a PC local directory. In addition, use the website backup to restore on a single click or transfer it completely to a new domain.

Features:

• Simple Interface;
• Easy backup;
• Authenticate remote storages;
• Multiple cloud storages;
• FTP and SFTP backups;
• One-click restore;
• Download backup to local drives;
• Manual and automatic backups;
• Backup scheduling;
• Save files and database;
• Easy site migration;
• Unused image cleaner.

Pros:

• A single plugin with multiple features;
• Easy to use;
• Backup support for large databases and files;
• Multiple cloud storage options;
• Incremental backup for large websites;
• Secures backup data by encryption.

Cons:

• Cloud restore might experience issues for shared hosting

Price: Free. Start from $49/year for the premium features.

Comparison chart

This table will give you an overview of all that you've learnt about all the WordPress migration plugins above:

Conclusion

These are the 10 best WordPress migration plugins. Depending on your usage needs and technological level, you can choose the flexible plugin for your individual/business. Which plugin are you using, share your experience with us.

Besides, there are some other plugins such as BlogVault, Multisite Migrator, SiteGround Migrator, WPBackItUp, Total UpKeep, WP Staging Premium, etc.

If you have any suggested plugins you want to be on the list, please comment below. Thanks for reading!