Hostney Migration

Hostney Migration connects your WordPress site to the Hostney hosting platform so the Hostney worker can pull your database and files automatically. No SSH access, FTP credentials, or manual exports required. Your source site stays fully operational throughout the process.

New to Hostney?

Hostney is managed hosting for WordPress, with bot protection, daily backups and the Ellie AI assistant on every plan. You can try it free for 14 days with no credit card, and this plugin works on the trial: add your site’s domain in the Hostney control panel, and the copy lands on a temporary Hostney address while your current site keeps serving visitors. Nothing changes for them until you point your domain at Hostney. On paid plans, Hostney’s team will also run the migration for you at no extra cost.

See the plans and the free trial · How the plugin migration works

How it works:

1. Generate a migration token in your Hostney control panel
2. Install this plugin on your source WordPress site
3. Go to Tools > Hostney Migration and paste the token
4. Click “Start migration” in the Hostney control panel
5. The worker pulls your database and files automatically

What gets migrated:

• All database tables (exported row-by-row with primary key pagination)
• All WordPress files (transferred in chunks with checksum verification)
• File permissions and directory structure

What gets excluded automatically:

• The page cache and update folders directly inside wp-content (cache, upgrade)
• Log files
• Backup folders directly inside wp-content (UpdraftPlus, All-in-One WP Migration, and folders whose name starts with “backup”)
• Node modules and .git directories

Folders inside your plugins and themes are always copied, whatever their name.

Security:

All requests from the Hostney worker are authenticated using HMAC-SHA256 signatures with timestamp validation and replay protection. The migration token is removed from your site automatically when the migration is over, when it is revoked in the Hostney control panel, 7 days after you connected at the latest, and when the plugin is deactivated. While no token is stored, the plugin’s REST API endpoints do not exist.

Privacy Policy

This plugin sends the following data to Hostney servers (api.hostney.com) when you click Connect:

• Your site URL and REST API URL
• WordPress version
• PHP version
• Number of database tables and total database size
• Number of files and total file size
• Active theme name and active plugin count
• The plugin’s version, whether the site is a multisite network and how many sites it has, and whether its content, plugins and uploads folders are in the standard place (a yes or a short reason, never a folder path)

This data is used solely to register and plan the migration. No file contents, database rows, passwords, or personal data are transmitted during the connection step.

During an active migration (initiated from the Hostney control panel), the Hostney worker connects to your site’s REST API endpoints to read database tables and files. All requests are authenticated with HMAC-SHA256 signatures. Data is transferred over HTTPS.

For more information, see the Hostney Privacy Policy and the Hostney Terms of Service.