Moving your domain and small website to new hosting: every question answered

A situation that comes up often: a small business owner, not a techie, wants to move their domain and a small website to new hosting, and arrives with a handwritten list of questions. What will it cost in total, including the transfer? What does it renew at? Will my address be public? Who actually does the transfer? Is there a fee to leave? What happens to my email? Is the hosting big enough?

Every one of those questions has a plain answer. Moving a domain and small website to Gravity Host costs £45 for the first year of hosting, then £75 a year. A .co.uk moves across free and renews at £10 a year; a .com costs £15 to transfer, which adds a year to it. Gravity Host does the transfer, moves the site and email, and charges nothing to leave later.

The rest of this page takes the list one question at a time, in the order people usually ask them.

What will the first year cost in total, including the transfer?

The first-year cost is the hosting plus whatever the domain transfer costs, and the transfer price depends on the ending of the domain. Gravity Host hosting is £45 for the first year, and that figure is the total at checkout. Moving an existing site across is included.

Your domain ends in	Transfer cost	What happens to the expiry date	Renews at
.co.uk, .uk or .org.uk	Free	Stays the same; you pay the normal renewal when it falls due	£10 a year
.com	£15	One year added to the current expiry	£15 a year
.net or .org	£18	One year added to the current expiry	£18 a year

So a business with a .co.uk pays £45 in the first year, plus £10 whenever the domain's existing renewal date arrives. A business with a .com pays £45 plus £15, and gets an extra year on the domain for that £15. A .com transfer is really a renewal paid early, so none of the time already bought is lost.

What does it renew at after the first year?

Hosting renews at £75 a year. Both prices are shown together before checkout, so the second-year figure is never a surprise. Domains renew at exactly the price they register at: £10 for a .co.uk, £15 for a .com. The only thing that moves a domain price is the registry changing its own charges, which affects every registrar at once.

Ask this question of any provider, and ask for the renewal figure in writing. The first-year price is what people compare, and the renewal is what they actually pay for the next ten years.

Will my name and address be on public record?

For a .uk, .co.uk, .org.uk or .eu domain registered by a private individual, no. Those registries keep an individual's personal details out of the public WHOIS record by default, at no charge. On .com, .net, .org and a few others the registrant details form part of the public record, and WHOIS privacy can be added for £5 a year to hide your name, address, email and phone number.

Who actually does the domain transfer?

Gravity Host does. You send the domain name through the domain transfer page, and a real person replies to confirm the price and the next steps before anything is sent to the registry. Nothing is charged until you have agreed. Your part is small and happens at your current provider:

• For a .com, .net or .org: remove the transfer lock on the domain and copy its transfer code (called the EPP or authorisation code). Your current provider may email you to approve the move, and approving it speeds things up.
• For a .co.uk or .uk: there is no code. Remove the transfer lock and change its IPS tag to ENOM in your current provider's control panel. Some panels refuse the tag change while the domain is still locked, without saying why, so take the lock off first.

A .co.uk usually completes in about 24 hours. A .com, .net or .org takes five to seven days. Two timing rules catch people out: a .com cannot move within 60 days of being registered or transferred, and a .uk within 90 days of its expiry date is renewed as part of the move.

Does the website go offline during the move?

Normally not. The domain transfer and the website move are two separate jobs. The usual order is to set up the new hosting, copy the website and mailboxes across, check everything works, and only then point the domain at the new server. The site keeps running from the old host until that last step. Our guide to migrating a website without downtime walks through that sequence in detail.

Is there a fee to leave later?

Gravity Host charges no transfer-out fee on domains, and there is no long hosting contract: you can stop renewing whenever you like. The hosting runs on cPanel, the same standard setup used across the industry, so your website files, databases and mailboxes can be packed up and moved to another host. After an account closes, you have 30 days to ask for an export of your data.

It is worth checking the leaving terms at your current provider too, before you start. The domain section of their terms, or their help pages, will say whether moving a name away carries a charge.

What happens to my email?

Email at your own domain comes with the hosting, with as many addresses as you need, for you and anyone who works with you. When Gravity Host moves your site across, it moves your existing mailboxes and the messages in them too. The switch happens when the domain starts pointing at the new server, so mail keeps arriving in the old mailboxes right up to that moment.

Is the hosting big enough for a small site?

For a normal business website and its email, yes. The standard plan has 15 GB of NVMe SSD storage shared between website and email, 1 TB of monthly bandwidth, 2 CPU cores and 2 GB of RAM, with unlimited email accounts, databases and websites within that storage. A copy of everything is taken daily, and you can restore yesterday's version yourself from cPanel.

If the site grows, larger sizes are on the order page and you can change size at any time. Nothing else about the plan changes. A brochure site with a contact form and a few mailboxes uses a small fraction of 15 GB; years of email with large attachments is what usually fills it.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to transfer my domain to move my website?

No. A domain can stay with its current registrar while the website and email move, as long as its nameservers are pointed at the new host. For Gravity Host those are ns1.gravityhost.co.uk and ns2.gravityhost.co.uk. Many owners move the website first and transfer the domain later, or never. Keeping the domain and hosting in one place does make renewals simpler, because there is one account, one set of reminders and one person to ask when something needs changing.

What do I need from my current provider before I start?

Three things: access to the account that holds the domain, the ability to take its transfer lock off, and either the EPP transfer code (for .com, .net, .org and most others) or the option to change the IPS tag to ENOM (for .co.uk and .uk). For the website move, the login to the old hosting control panel helps, because it lets the site files, databases and mailboxes be copied directly. If you have lost those logins, recover them first; the rest of the move depends on them.

Can I get my money back if it is not right for me?

Gravity Host hosting has a 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. Domain registrations cannot be refunded once they are in your name, because the registration is made with the registry immediately and is personalised to you. In practice it means the hosting can be tried without much risk, while a new domain registration is a firm purchase from the moment it goes through.

What happens if my domain is close to expiring?

A .co.uk or .uk within 90 days of its expiry date is renewed as part of the transfer, so it does not lapse mid-move. A .com gains a year when it transfers anyway. If a domain has already expired, act quickly: a .co.uk has 90 days to renew at the ordinary price with no restore fee, while a .com has 30 days before an expensive redemption period begins. Renewing on time avoids every penny of that recovery cost.

How long does the whole move take from start to finish?

The hosting account is ready as soon as payment goes through. Copying the website and its mailboxes across starts once the old hosting login is available, and a small site is a small job. After that, pointing the domain at the new server usually takes effect within a few hours as DNS updates. The domain transfer itself runs alongside: about 24 hours for a .co.uk and five to seven days for a .com, with the website online throughout.

Can one hosting plan run more than one website?

Yes. One Gravity Host plan can run a separate website on each of your domains, all within the plan's storage. That suits a business with a main site and a second domain for a side venture or an old trading name. Each domain can have its own email addresses as well. The only limit is the total storage, and if two sites and their mailboxes start to fill 15 GB, the plan size can be changed at any time.

Will someone explain it if I am not technical?

Yes. Support at Gravity Host is a small UK team: you write in, a person reads it and writes back, usually the same working day. Questions like the ones on this page are exactly what they answer before you buy, and asking costs nothing. Sending your own list, in your own words, is a perfectly good way to start. The answer comes back with the prices for your specific domain and site.

If your list looks like the one at the top of this page, the next step is to check your domain's ending and expiry date at your current provider. That one detail decides the transfer price, the timing and whether a renewal is folded into the move.