Migrating to Kinsta: debunking the myths that hold agencies back

Managing WordPress sites for clients requires hosting that delivers without constant intervention. However, there’s a valid fear of downtime, broken DNS records, or lost data that may create hesitation, preventing you from making a necessary infrastructure change.

Kinsta’s migration team handles agency workloads every day, from individual high-traffic sites to full client portfolios. Below, we break down the most persistent migration myths and show how Kinsta’s process actually works in real-world scenarios.

Myth 1: Migration takes your sites offline for hours or days

The myth: Migrating to new hosting requires taking your sites offline while files transfer and DNS propagates. This results in hours or days of downtime that impact clients and revenue.

The fear of extended downtime is a significant barrier to agency migration. Typical hosting migrations often require taking sites offline during the transfer. For instance, shared hosting providers usually lack the necessary infrastructure to clone sites without affecting the live version.

The truth

Kinsta’s migration process never requires your site to go offline. The migration team clones your site to Kinsta’s servers while your original site continues to serve traffic and remain functional.

The only brief transition period occurs when you update DNS records. During DNS propagation, some visitors may reach your old hosting while others access Kinsta’s servers. This propagation typically completes within minutes to a few hours, depending on your DNS provider and TTL settings. This means you can schedule DNS updates during low-traffic periods or coordinate changes around specific business requirements.

Myth 2: DNS changes will break your site and email services

The myth: Changing DNS disrupts email delivery, causing temporary site inaccessibility and creating conflicts between hosting environments.

DNS changes can create anxiety because they represent a critical point where things could go wrong. This is a legitimate worry as poorly handled DNS migrations can cause disruptions, take a site offline, or create conflicts between environments.

The truth

Kinsta’s approach to DNS management prevents these issues through some careful verification and clear guidance. You maintain full control over when and how DNS records are updated, allowing you to coordinate changes with your team and clients at your own pace.

The practical impact of DNS propagation is minimal when both locations serve the same site version, especially since Kinsta clones your site before you update the DNS.

As for email hosting, MX records direct email delivery and exist separately from A records that point your domain to web hosting. Additionally, if your email hosting is separate from your web hosting, your records typically don’t need to change.

The verification process Kinsta recommends involves using the Site Preview tool before updating, which lets you access your migrated site using a temporary URL. You can test functionality, verify content, and check integrations before making DNS changes that affect visitors.

According to the migration team:

Within our post-migration messaging, we link to articles for pointing DNS that customers may review and then reach out to our Support Engineers for any further inquiries.

Myth 3: Your custom setup is too complex to migrate smoothly

The myth: Custom WordPress architectures, non-standard configurations, and specialized setups are too complex for managed hosting platforms to support, or will break during migration.

Agencies often build WordPress sites using non-standard architectures that can enhance security, improve performance, or streamline development workflows. These custom configurations may lead you to believe that managed hosting platforms do not support them.

The truth

Kinsta’s migration team regularly handles a wide range of technical configurations, so your custom setup likely isn’t as unique as it appears.

For example, Bedrock and Roots stack implementations frequently appear in agency migrations. Multisite networks (whether subdomain, subdirectory, or domain-mapped) undergo full network verification, domain mapping checks, and inter-site functionality testing during the migration process.

When sites rely on Apache-only directives, Kinsta translates them into Nginx-compatible rules. This includes validating rewrite behavior, redirects, and access controls to ensure the site behaves identically in production. As the team explains:

The Migrations team has handled a variety of configurations such as Bedrock/Roots, multisite and reverse proxies. We’ve successfully migrated redirect rules, IP rules, and approved Nginx rules.

And for edge cases, the team builds custom tooling. One agency arrived with 800+ redirect rules stored in a legacy system with no export option. Kinsta’s engineers wrote a script to extract, normalize, and reformat the rules for clean import into Kinsta’s redirect manager.

Myth 4: You lose data or have broken links after migration

The myth: WordPress migrations corrupt databases, break internal site links, damage media references, and cause data loss that requires extensive manual fixes.

Data integrity is a valid worry because WordPress stores complex relationships in its database. Serialized data (where PHP objects get stored as strings) can break if URLs change without proper handling. Internal links, media references, and plugin configurations all depend on accurate path and domain information.

The truth

Kinsta’s migration workflow is designed specifically to prevent these issues, and all risks are caught before DNS changes affect visitors.

The process starts with a clean, host-compatible backup of your site. Depending on your current provider, the migration team uses command-line tools, phpMyAdmin, or panel-level exports to generate a complete snapshot of your data.

Once imported, the team performs a series of integrity checks, including database size verification, conversion of legacy MyISAM tables to InnoDB, and automated detection of multisite or subdirectory configurations based on the wp-config.php file.

URL changes and data updates are handled safely using WP-CLI search-and-replace, not manual SQL edits. This ensures serialized arrays remain intact. Media Library paths undergo manual verification, and the team runs through front-end and back-end tests to confirm images and attachments load correctly.

The same level of attention is applied to link behavior and hard-coded URLs. During quality assurance, the team identifies any theme or plugin files that reference absolute paths. When needed, they flag these items and provide guidance on how to correct them using WordPress-friendly development practices.

As the Migrations team explains:

We perform quality assurance checks to ensure the migrated site reflects the source site. This includes updating domain and path referencing. We’ll also make recommendations on how to resolve issues with outdated themes or plugins.

Myth 5: Large sites or multiple sites will take weeks to migrate

The myth: Sites with large databases, extensive file libraries, or agency portfolios with dozens of sites will require weeks or months to migrate successfully.

Agencies managing high-volume sites often assume that large-scale migrations are slow and risky. This belief usually comes from past experiences with hosting providers that have limited migration capacity or no dedicated team to handle complex workloads.

The truth

Kinsta’s migration workflow scales to large and multi-site portfolios without creating unreasonable delays.

With proper preplanning, timelines stay predictable even for very large sites. As the migration team explains:

With the proper preplanning, we are able to meet the customer’s timeline. For large sites, we can perform a two-step migration where we migrate files, then at a later date migrate newer files and export the database to reduce the migration time.

An example from the team is a 300GB site migration, where file migration took over 24 hours due to the slow connection speeds between the outgoing host and Kinsta. The team migrated files two days before the scheduled completion date, then migrated only the newer files, along with the database export, on the final day.

Bulk migrations follow a similarly structured approach:

• You receive a bulk migration spreadsheet to provide details for every site in the portfolio.
• The team aims to migrate at least eight sites per agency per business day, adjusting scheduling based on your priorities.
• After each batch completes, the team sends notifications so you can begin testing right away.

For e-commerce and media sites that have constantly updating content, the two-step approach migrates an initial batch of files, then performs a final sync of new content and a database export just before any DNS changes. This minimizes divergence between the live site and the migrated version.

Preparing your agency for a smooth migration

Good preparation speeds up migrations and reduces the chance of unexpected issues.

Kinsta’s migration team uses an internal pre-migration checklist based on years of experience and thousands of completed migrations. Agencies can mirror that same structure to make the process even smoother.

1. Align your team and communication channels: Start by confirming who on your team will participate in the migration. Share their email addresses so Kinsta can add them all to a single migration ticket. This centralizes updates and avoids fragmented communication during the process.
2. Verify all credentials before submitting your request: Test every login your migration will depend on:
   • Hosting panel access
   • SSH or SFTP credentials
   • WordPress Administrator accounts

   Ensuring these credentials work ahead of time eliminates delays once the migration begins.

3. Document custom configurations and anything out of the ordinary: The more context the migration team has, the faster they can replicate your setup accurately. Helpful details include:
   • Custom redirect rules that must be preserved
   • Scheduled tasks or cron jobs that need to continue running
   • Whether maintenance mode is required for eCommerce sites
   • Non-standard server configurations or overrides
   • Any IP restrictions or access control rules currently in place

   These items help the team anticipate edge cases before they arise.

4. Provide DNS and email-related information: DNS access becomes important during the final cutover, so note where your DNS is managed and make sure credentials are ready. You should also specify where your email hosting resides, e.g., Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or a separate email provider, as this helps the team coordinate around MX records and avoid mail disruptions.
5. Set expectations with stakeholders: Make sure everyone involved understands the migration workflow, what the timeline looks like, and whether any downtime or maintenance windows are expected. Clear communication, whether through Kinsta or your internal team, keeps the process smooth and prevents last-minute surprises.

What this means for your agency

Migrating WordPress sites shouldn’t feel risky or disruptive, yet outdated hosting experiences have led many agencies to believe otherwise.

Kinsta’s migration team exists to make the process predictable, fast, and tailored to the complexities agencies deal with every day.

With the obstacles out of the way, are you ready to make that leap? Explore Kinsta’s managed hosting for WordPress and discover how our agency partner program supports your growth.

If you have any questions, our team is always here to help.

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