Transferring a New Client to My Hosting Account

Question: I have a new client who is currently hosted elsewhere and wants to transfer their website and emails to my reseller account. What steps do I need to take?

Related to: webhosting | email hosting

- Introduction:

You are a freelancer, digital agency, or web development company.

A new client, who already has a website and hosting service with another provider, is interested in your hosting services and wants to transfer to your reseller hosting service and management.

First of all, congratulations! Another client will enjoy our hosting services and your care. (To bless our own heads a little.)

Below, I will describe the steps you need to follow and some useful technical tips.

- The Hosting Account:

What is a "hosting account" or "account hosting" and what does it consist of?

A general description is as follows:

A hosting account is a very small part, a piece of a web server that provides access to server software and web services so that you, the client, can add your domain name and use it online.

What does it consist of?

It consists of (in the order we recommend following for the transfer):

1. WEB (files and folders)
2. Database (database)
3. eMail (mailboxes in the form user@mydomain.tld)
4. DNS (nameservers for the domain)
5. Domain Name (registrar)

Since these are the contents of a hosting account, they must be transferred from the current provider to your management.

If the client has hosting with another provider with a control panel (e.g. plesk or cpanel), you will ask them to give you access to this control panel.

If the client does not have access to the control panel, there are other methods.
Open us a support ticket to help you.

- The Process and Steps to Follow:

Before starting any process, it is wise to have a full backup of the hosting account.

1. WEB.
After logging in to the control panel of the previous provider, you will need to take a copy of the document root.
The document root in plesk is the httpdocs folder.
The document root in cpanel is the public_html folder.
2. Database.
Inside the control panel, you will find the database. With phpmyadmin, you can take a copy of the database.
3. eMail.
In the plesk panel of the account you hold in WebHosting|4U you will find the Email Import function

With the email import you can transfer the contents of the mailbox from the previous provider.
To do this, you need to know the email passwords of the mailbox. If you don't know them, they must be reset. (Note that if they are reset, the email clients, e.g. Outlook or Thunderbird, must be reconfigured)

4. DNS
After the end of the transfer of files/folders/database/emails, you are ready to change DNS.
In the control panel of the provider, you declare the necessary nameservers to the registrar of your domain so that your domain name now operates from our systems.

The only action that affects the functionality of the domain, the website, and the email is the change of nameservers. Before this action, the functionality is not affected.

For .gr domains, the update is completed from 6 to 24 hours. For all other foreign domains, the change is completed much faster.

5. Domain Name (registrar)

Using the authorization code, you can start the process of changing the registrar.
For .gr, the change of registrar is free and is completed in real-time immediately, while for all other foreign domain names, the transfer process has a cost, and at the same time the domain gets +1 year of renewal.
The registrar change process is not mandatory, but it is recommended for the smoother management of your domain.

In practice, with step 4, the process is completed with the update of the nameservers. After the full update, the domain name operates from our systems.