Most owners stay on a website builder long after they stop liking it, for one reason: fear of breaking something. Losing Google rankings, losing email, losing the site for a week. All three are avoidable. Here is what a careful move looks like.
1. Make a list of everything you have
Before anything changes, write down every page on the current site, including blog posts and old pages that still get visits. Google Search Console shows which pages bring traffic. Those are the ones that must survive the move.
Also list everything that is not a page: contact forms, booking, payments, newsletter sign-ups, and which apps the builder runs for you.
2. Keep every address working
This is the part that protects your rankings. Every old address (URL) needs a redirect to its new page. If yoursite.com/services/kitchen-renovation becomes yoursite.com/kitchens, the old address must forward there permanently.
Without redirects, Google finds a pile of “page not found” errors and your rankings drop. With them, the value of the old pages carries over.
Titles and descriptions move over too, so the way you appear in search results stays the same, or gets better.
3. Don’t touch your email
Your email does not live on your website. It lives in separate DNS records connected to your domain. A move only changes where the website points. Copy the email records before switching, and test sending and receiving afterwards.
4. Build the new site first, switch later
The old site stays online the whole time. The new one is built on a private link, checked page by page, and only then does the domain switch over, ideally at a quiet hour. Visitors never see a “coming soon” page.
5. Watch Google for two weeks
After the switch, check Search Console for errors and fix any missed redirects. Keep the builder subscription running for a couple of weeks as a safety net, then cancel it.
Most sites gain traffic over the following weeks, simply because they load faster than they did on the builder.
What about my domain?
If the domain was bought through the builder, it can usually be transferred to a registrar in your name. One rule to know: domains bought or transferred in the last 60 days can’t be moved yet. That is a registrar rule, not something anyone can speed up.
Doing it yourself vs. having it done
You can do all of this yourself with patience and a spreadsheet. If you’d rather not, our migration service has a fixed price from $650, quoted after a free look at your current site.