Whether you need to migrate a client project from a local development site or you’re just tired of your web host’s sloooow service and awful support, there are many reasons why you might need to migrate a WordPress site.
Migrating a site manually can be fiddly and you risk messing things up (though if you follow our step-by-step guide How to Safely Move Your WordPress Site (Without Losing Anything!) you shouldn’t have any problems at all).
If you want to avoid the hassle and cut down on the amount of time it takes to move a site, there are plenty of plugin options that make migration a piece of cake. The list below includes free and premium migration plugins (and one script!).
Do you use a plugin to migrate WordPress sites? Tell us in the comments below.
WordPress Duplicator
There’s a lot of love for this free plugin, which allows you to duplicate, clone, backup, move and transfer an entire site from one place to another.
Duplicator has racked up more than 480,000 downloads and has received an average rating of 4.9 stars on the WordPress Plugin Repository. That’s a lot of happy people.
This plugin is made by developers for developers. It’s a great tool for pulling a production site down onto a local machine for testing, as well as the reverse – developing locally and pushing a site to a production server.
Duplicator is currently in beta and comes with the disclaimer that while it’s been heavily tested, it does require “above average” technical knowledge. So use it with caution, but also with confidence that thousands of people are happily using it.
Duplicator gets a lot of love from me, too. This is a great plugin.
WordPress Move
You can change the domain name you’re using and migrate your installation to another server with WordPress Move. This plugin also allows you to transfer your database and create backups of your installation.
This free plugin isn’t quite as popular as Duplicator (with just 80,000 downloads), though it is easy to use and migrating a site is quick and painless.
Don’t forget to back up your files before using this plugin (obviously!) because it also comes with the disclaimer that you use it at your own risk.
BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is a popular premium option for moving a WordPress site to another domain or host. If you build client sites locally or on a temporary domain, this plugin lets you move entire sites, including themes, plugins, widgets etc. all over to a live client domain.
All you need to do is follow the on-screen prompts and the provided ImportBuddy script will take care of migrating URLs and file paths in posts, settings and configuration files.
This plugin isn’t free. Prices start at $80 for two sites.
WP Migrate DB Pro
WP Migrate DB PRO lets you copy your database from one WordPress install to another with just one click in your dashboard. It’s a handy plugin for syncing a local development database with a live site.
This plugin is great for developers who build client sites locally. You can easily pull a live database from a remote site and replace it with your local database, or vice versa.
WP Migrate DB Pro handles updating content, widgets, menus etc. to a new site’s URL and easily handles serialised data.
Prices start at $40 for four WordPress installations.
myEASYbackup
myEASYbackup lets you backup, restore and migrate your WordPress installation.
The built-in myEASYrestore tool allows you to migrate your installation to a new server. It also takes care of all references in your database if you move to a different domain.
This plugin is free for a single domain but you need to sign up for a license, which can be a bit annoying.
UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus lets you to clone a website entirely at a different location, all from your WordPress dashboard.
You can easily import backups made elsewhere, allowing you to quickly migrate a site to a different install.
You’ll need to upgrade to the premium version of this plugin for a migration addon and Multisite compatibility. Prices start at $60 for two licences.
WP Clone by WP Academy
WP Clone lets you move or copy a WordPress site to another domain or hosting server. You can also use it to move your site to or from local server hosting, to create copies of your site for development or testing purposes, to backup your site and to install pre-configured versions of WordPress.