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MIGRATION GUIDE

Switching from GoDaddy to Kinsta

Kinsta does this one for you: migrations are free, unlimited and handled by their team. The two things worth knowing in advance are both GoDaddy-specific, and both are the kind of thing that silently stalls a migration request for a week.

Where our research ends. We keep a full hand-researched dossier on Kinsta. We do not keep one on GoDaddy, so you will not find us characterising their pricing or their product here — that would be exactly the invented-authority thing we complain about in other people’s comparison pages. What follows is what our research says about Kinsta, and what Kinsta’s own documentation says about moving to it. Check GoDaddy’s current terms yourself before you cancel anything.

Is Kinsta the right destination for you?

Our dossier is blunt about this. Kinsta is genuinely best for business-critical WordPress sites where speed, uptime and expert support directly affect revenue. On price: Managed WordPress hosting from about $35/mo (Starter: one site, 25k visits, 10GB) or roughly $29/mo billed annually, scaling by site count and traffic (2026).

The honest knock: You're paying a premium for managed speed, Google Cloud infrastructure and expert support — worth it if performance and hands-off management matter, wasteful on a low-traffic hobby site a $5 shared host would carry fine.

How the migration actually works

These steps are summarised from Kinsta’s own public documentation — we have not invented or embellished a single one. Read the source before you start, because vendors change their import tooling more often than they change their pricing page: Kinsta Docs — Migrating to Kinsta →

Step 1. Sign up and request the migration

Once you have a plan, open MyKinsta, go to the WordPress sites section and click Request migration. Migrations are free and unlimited on all plans — this is not a one-off promotional credit.

Step 2. Choose your timing

You can ask for it as soon as possible, schedule it for a specific date, or request an expedited migration if you are in a hurry. Kinsta moves the site and keeps you in the loop so you can review everything on a staging URL before it goes live.

Step 3. Clear the 2FA blocker first

GoDaddy accounts use two-factor authentication, which blocks the migration team from getting in. Kinsta's documentation says to add their migration address to your account before you submit the request. Skipping this is the single most common reason a request sits waiting.

Step 4. Or hand over a backup file instead of credentials

On budget shared hosting, database exports can time out at 30–60 seconds. If your site is large, supply an UpdraftPlus or All-in-One WP Migration backup file rather than GoDaddy credentials — it sidesteps both the timeout and the 2FA problem.

What the docs quietly admit

Every migration has friction. These are the documented ones — the things worth knowing before you start, not after:

When not to switch

The most useful thing we can tell you is when to stay put. Skip this migration if you run a small, low-traffic site on a tight budget — entry-level shared hosting or a caching plugin gets you most of the way for a fraction of the price. Beyond that: if your current setup works, your list is healthy and nobody on your team is complaining, a migration buys you a week of admin and a fresh set of unknowns. Switch because something specific is broken or expensive — a deliverability problem you can name, a bill that has outgrown the value, a feature you genuinely cannot get — not because a comparison page told you the grass was greener.

Try Kinsta →Read the full Kinsta review

Questions people actually ask

Is it hard to migrate from GoDaddy to Kinsta?

Kinsta does this one for you: migrations are free, unlimited and handled by their team. The full step-by-step is on this page, summarised from Kinsta's own documentation.

Will I lose data moving from GoDaddy to Kinsta?

GoDaddy's 2FA will stall the migration team unless you whitelist Kinsta's migration contact first.

When should I not switch to Kinsta?

Skip it if you run a small, low-traffic site on a tight budget — entry-level shared hosting or a caching plugin gets you most of the way for a fraction of the price. A migration is only worth it when the tool solves a problem that is already costing you real hours or revenue.

What is the honest downside of Kinsta?

You're paying a premium for managed speed, Google Cloud infrastructure and expert support — worth it if performance and hands-off management matter, wasteful on a low-traffic hobby site a $5 shared host would carry fine.

More on Kinsta

The review is the hub — everything we publish on Kinsta hangs off it:

Full research corpus: The Honest Software Atlas · documented price hikes: Price Watch · original data studies: AIBM Research

This guide is our researched assessment — not a paid placement, and not sponsored by either vendor. The migration steps are summarised from the destination vendor’s own public documentation, linked in full on this page. Some links are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you, and it never changes the take. How we review →