Migrating your Magento store from a cPanel-based host to Cloudways is a straightforward process that lets you take advantage of Cloudways’ managed Magento hosting platform, with features like optimized performance, automated backups, staging environments, and easy server management.
This step-by-step guide explains how to move your Magento store from cPanel to Cloudways safely and efficiently.
You'll learn how to back up your Magento files and database, upload them to your new Cloudways server, configure your application, and test everything before going live.
Whether you're looking to improve your site speed, simplify server management, or reduce hosting headaches, Cloudways makes Magento migration easy—no advanced sysadmin skills required.
Table of Contents:
Migrating Magento from a cPanel Host to Cloudways
In this guide, you'll learn how to migrate your Magento store from a cPanel-based hosting provider to Cloudways in clear, easy steps.
These instructions are general and may vary slightly depending on your cPanel version, so some familiarity with FTP, databases, and server tools is helpful.
How to Migrate Your Magento Store from cPanel to Cloudways
This process covers backing up your site, transferring files and databases, updating configurations, and testing before going live.
Step #1 - Create a Full Backup (Web Files and Database) of Your Magento Store via cPanel:
Log in to the cPanel of your old host.
To create a full backup, click on the Backups option from the first page as shown in the figure below.
Download Web Files:
Click on the button Home Directory.
To download a copy of the backup file to your computer, click the filename under Backups Available for Download.
The date on which the backup is created appears in the filename (which begins with backup-MM-DD-YYYY). The file is stored as a tarball (compressed data file) with the extension.tar.gz.
Downloading Database:
Now you’ll need to download a backup of your Magento database. In cPanel, go to the MySQL Databases section to see a list of your databases. Locate the database for your Magento store, select it, and click to download. The backup will be saved to your computer with a .sql extension.
Step #2 - Upload Web-Files Backup to Your Cloudways Server:
Log in to Cloudways Platform.
From the side menu bar, click on Flexible
Choose your desired Server from the server list and click on it.
Locate your master credentials from the Master Credentials section under the Server Management area.
Here we assume that you have already launched a new server in your Cloudways account and installed a clean Magento application on it.
Open an FTP client program of your choice. We have used WinSCP in this example.
Under HostName enter your Cloudways server IP Address.
Enter port 22 under Port number.
Enter the Username and Password that you find in the Cloudways console application tab.
Click on the Login button.
You should see a warning. At that point, just click on Yes to continue.
Now you'll upload the web files backup (.tar.gz file) from your computer to your Cloudways server. Once uploaded, you'll need to extract (untar) the backup on the server to restore your Magento files.
Step #3 - Edit Database Details in Your local.xml File:
Under public_html > app > etc, open the file local.xml by just double-clicking it (from your preferred FTP client).
Now we need to replace the database connection details (database name, username, and password) with the correct ones.
Step #4 - Restore Database Backup to Cloudways Server:
Go back to your Cloudways Platform Homepage and click on Flexible.
Click on Applications and choose your desired application.
Navigate to the Application Management section.
Click the Launch Database Manager button to open the Cloudways Database Manager.
The Cloudways Database Manager will open. To restore your database, simply click on the Import option.
As soon as you click on Import, a new window will appear providing you an option to choose your Database backup file:
Click on Browse.
After choosing your MySQL database backup file, click on Execute.
You can also click on checks to track errors during the restore process.
Step #5 - Clearing Magento & Varnish Cache:
Before testing your migrated store, it’s essential to clear both the Varnish and Magento caches to avoid loading outdated content.
Follow these steps:
Purge Varnish Cache:
Go to your Cloudways Console.
Under Server Management, navigate to Manage Services.
Select Varnish and click Purge.
Clear Magento Cache:
Connect to your server via SSH or SFTP.
Go to the public_html/var/cache directory.
Delete all contents inside the cache folder (but do not delete the folder itself).
Step #6 - Test Your Newly Migrated Magento:
Under the Application Management area, do the following steps.
Click on the Domain Management section.
Add a domain if there is no domain in the domain list.
Click on 3 dots and click on Make Primary button to make that domain your primary domain.
Check the domain's status in the Type section to confirm the changes.
Final Steps: Test and Go Live
That’s it—your Magento store migration is complete!
Before updating your DNS settings, thoroughly test your site to ensure everything works correctly. You can test the site locally by editing your computer’s hosts file.
Note: Use your existing Magento admin credentials to log in, as the migration process replaces the default Cloudways credentials.
Once you're satisfied with how your store runs on the new server, update your DNS records to point to Cloudways and make your site live.
That’s it! We hope this article was helpful.
Need Help?
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