Running a managed hosting company that offers free migrations is no small feat. It demands a massive amount of time from our engineering team to ensure every transfer is seamless, with zero downtime or data loss.
At HostWP.io, moving WordPress sites is daily work. But the existing migration tools were constantly letting us down. They either required SSH access we didn’t always have, timed out on larger sites, missed custom database tables, or relied on clunky local zip downloads that ate up bandwidth.
So, our talented engineers decided to stop fighting the old tools and build our own. The goal was simple: automate the entire migration process directly from within WordPress.
The results blew us away. During rigorous internal testing, we successfully transferred massive 7GB+ WordPress sites in just 3 to 5 minutes. We realized we had built something too good to keep to ourselves. We created the exact tool we desperately needed for our own daily workflow, and now, we’re thrilled to give it to the entire WordPress community—100% free on WordPress.org.
How’s FastMigrate Different From Other Migration Plugins
Most migration plugins work the same outdated way: they download your entire site to your computer, then upload it to the new server.
That’s slow. It’s unreliable. And it wastes your bandwidth.
FastMigrate does something different: it connects your two WordPress sites directly, server-to-server. Your data moves between the two hosts at full data-center speed and never touches your browser or your local disk. You can literally close your laptop and grab a coffee while it works.
How It Actually Works
It’s stupidly simple:
- Install FastMigrate on both sites (the one you’re moving and the new one)
- On the source site: click “Prepare Migration.” The plugin backs up everything – database, plugins, themes, uploads – into checksummed archives
- Copy the key that appears
- On the destination site: paste the key and click “Start Migration.” The destination pulls everything straight from the source, imports the database, rewrites URLs safely (even serialized PHP data and page-builder JSON), and activates your migrated site
- Verify, then confirm. Until you confirm, there’s a one-click Rollback button that instantly restores your previous site. Nothing gets deleted until you say so.
That’s it. No SSH required. No fancy server access. Works on shared hosting, managed WordPress, VPS, dedicated servers – basically anywhere with PHP 7.4+.
The Stuff That Matters
Speed: Typical sites migrate in 1-3 minutes. Data moves at data-center speed, not your home Wi-Fi speed.
Safety: HMAC-signed transfers with 24-hour expiration keys. Your backups are never publicly downloadable. One-click rollback until you confirm everything works.
Completeness: Full site clone – database (including custom tables), all plugins, themes, uploads, and root files. (We exclude .htaccess by default for safety, and never touch wp-config.php, WordPress core, .git, or vendor/node_modules on the destination.)
Smart tech: Automatic use of native database export, native archive tools, and parallel transfers where available. Chunked and resumable transfers so slow or restricted hosts won’t stall the job.
Privacy: No tracking. No telemetry. No phone-home. No third-party servers. Your data travels directly from your source host to your destination host. We never see your site content. All processing happens on your own servers.
For developers: WP-CLI support included (wp hostwpio-fm backup, wp hostwpio-fm migrate <key>, wp hostwpio-fm status). Clean uninstall that removes every folder, file, and database table it created.
It’s Free. Like, Actually Free.
No premium version. No “pro features” locked behind a paywall. No upsells.
Just a powerful migration tool that works, available on WordPress.org right now.
Try It Out
👉 https://wordpress.org/plugins/fast-migrate-server-to-server/
Install it. Migrate a site. Let us know what you think.
P.S. The entire plugin is 100% open source (GPLv2+). If you’re curious how it works under the hood, the source code is there for you to audit. FastMigrate Plugin is our contribution to the WordPress ecosystem, and we promise to keep it free to use for everyone and make migrations between hosts simpler.
