When you sign up for PMPro Hosting, we handle the migration for you. You give us admin access to your current WordPress site, and our team moves it onto a new server configured specifically for Paid Memberships Pro.

This page explains what you need to give us, what we do on your behalf, and roughly how long each part takes. We want the process to be transparent: nothing here is a black box.

What We Need From You

• Administrator login for your current WordPress site
• A good time to pause your site. We coordinate this with you so we’re not pausing checkout during a product launch or peak traffic
• A heads-up if you have unusual setup. This could include individual files over 2GB, custom server-level configuration, or anything else that might not transfer through a standard plugin-based backup

That’s it. You don’t install anything, run any commands, or touch the backup process yourself.

How Long It Takes

• Backup and upload: Anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, depending on your site’s size. Runs in the background on your current server.
• Restore onto your new server: Typically same-day or next business day after the upload finishes.
• Staging review: You preview the migrated site on a temporary URL and take as long as you need before approving cutover.
• DNS cutover: A few minutes once you give us the green light.

Most customers are fully migrated within 1–2 business days of kickoff.

What Your Visitors See

There’s a window during the migration, from the moment we pause your site to the moment DNS points to the new server, where visitors see a simple “Site Under Maintenance” page instead of your normal site. This is typically a few hours, depending on your site’s size and how quickly we work through the steps.

After DNS cutover, there’s no additional downtime. Your members and visitors see the new site at your normal domain.

What Actually Happens

The rest of this page walks through the migration step-by-step so you know what we’re doing on your site. You don’t need to act on any of this. It’s here so the process isn’t a mystery.

We use a custom plugin written by our team that is called the Migration Assistant. This plugin packages up your site and sends it to us. We install and run it ourselves using the admin credentials you provide. It’s a five-step wizard, which we drive from your WordPress admin.

Step 1: Site Check

A read-only scan of your site. Nothing is changed. We’re just collecting information so we can configure your new server to match. This includes:

• WordPress, PHP, and MySQL versions
• Installed plugins and active theme
• Disk space and memory limits
• Cron jobs and scheduled tasks
• Object cache status
• PMPro license status, member count, and active subscriptions
• Database size and table structure

Takes under a minute. The result is a site profile we use to match your new server’s PHP version, memory, caching, and so on to what your site actually needs.

Step 2: File Backup

The Migration Assistant compresses your WordPress files (everything in wp-content plus WordPress core) into a ZIP archive inside wp-content/pmpro-migrate/ on your current server.

What’s included: Your themes, plugins, uploaded media, WordPress core, configuration files, and any custom code.

What’s skipped: Files that either don’t need to move or would cause problems on the new server:

• Files larger than 2GB are too big to transfer reliably through this process; we move these separately if you have them
• Hidden files and temporary files (anything starting with . or ending in .tmp, .log, .sql, error_log, etc.)
• Cache directories from caching plugins (WP Rocket, WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache, LiteSpeed, Autoptimize, Cache Enabler)
• Backups from other plugins (UpdraftPlus, BackWPup, All-in-One WP Migration)
• WooCommerce log files
• The WordPress core upgrade folder (rebuilt automatically after migration)

The backup runs in the background on your current server. Small sites finish in a few minutes; large sites with lots of media can take an hour or more.

Step 3: Site Pause

This is the step we coordinate with you on timing. When we pause your site:

• Visitors see a “Site Under Maintenance” page
• Admins (including you) can still log in and use wp-admin normally
• Non-admin users can’t log in, submit forms, or check out
• Scheduled tasks (cron and Action Scheduler) are paused
• Outgoing emails are paused so no notifications fire during the migration
• Payment gateway activity is suspended
• Plugin and theme auto-updates are paused

Why we do this: from this point on, nothing changes on your old site. The database backup we take next will perfectly match the files we already backed up. No new orders, signups, or comments landing mid-migration. When we restore your site on the new server, everything is consistent.

Step 4: Database Backup

With your site paused, the Migration Assistant exports your full database, every table, every row, into a compressed archive alongside the file backup in wp-content/pmpro-migrate/.

Usually takes a few minutes. Very large databases (hundreds of thousands of rows) take longer.

Step 5: Upload

The Migration Assistant uploads both archives (your files and your database) to our secure storage in chunks. If the connection drops partway through, the upload resumes from the last successful chunk rather than restarting.

Once the upload finishes, the wizard is done and our team takes over on our side.

What We Do On Our End

1. Restore your site onto your new PMPro Hosting server
2. Configure the server based on your site profile from Step 1 (PHP version, memory, caching, etc.)
3. Set up a temporary staging URL (something like your-site.pmpro.site) so you can preview the migrated site before going live
4. Let you know via your support ticket when staging is ready to review

You review the staging site, flag anything that looks off, and approve the cutover when you’re satisfied. Only then do we point your domain at the new server. See our DNS and Domain Management guide for what happens during the final cutover.