Switching Cloud VPS Providers: A Migration Difficulty Guide

This page answers one question: once your site is already running on a VPS, how hard is it to move to a different one? That is a different question from getting onto a VPS in the first place. If you are coming from shared hosting and have not yet made the jump to any VPS, HD's shared-hosting-to-VPS migration guide covers that on-ramp step by step; this page picks up after that point and does not repeat it. What follows is scoped strictly to already-running-on-a-VPS-and-switching-providers, across the four entities this cluster has captured management-model depth for: DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode (Akamai), and Cloudways.

Two different migrations hiding under one label

"Migrating between cloud VPS providers" describes two mechanically different processes depending on what sits on each end of the move. A raw-IaaS-to-raw-IaaS move (DigitalOcean to Vultr, Linode to DigitalOcean, or any direction between those three) means you are moving root-access files and a database between two servers you administer yourself, using the same tools (SSH, rsync, a database dump) regardless of which pair of providers is involved. A move into or out of Cloudways is a different shape of work: Cloudways runs a managed application layer on top of infrastructure like DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode, so a move that touches Cloudways either removes that managed layer (moving out, onto raw infrastructure you now administer yourself) or adds it (moving in, onto a platform that per HD's Cloudways review offers migration assistance most raw-IaaS providers do not).

Step by step: migrating raw IaaS to raw IaaS

This is the process for moving between DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode (Akamai) in any direction. It is the same sequence regardless of which two of the three you are moving between, because all three sell the same product shape: a root-access virtual server you administer yourself.

1. Inventory the source server's exact stack before you provision anything. Record the operating system version, the runtime version (PHP, Node, Python, whatever your application depends on), the database engine and its version, installed system packages, and any cron jobs or background services. This inventory is the single most-skipped step, and skipping it is what turns a routine transfer into a multi-day debugging session after cutover.
2. Lower your domain's DNS TTL well before you touch anything. A short TTL means the eventual cutover propagates fast instead of leaving visitors split unpredictably between the old and new server for an extended window. Do this first, not on migration day; TTL changes take time to take effect themselves.
3. Provision the new instance sized to match or exceed the source, not just to match its sticker price. Entry tiers are not interchangeable across providers even when they sit at a similar price point. Linode's entry Nanode ships 1 GB of memory; DigitalOcean's entry Basic Droplet ships 512 MiB. Move a site sized for the Linode tier onto the cheapest DigitalOcean Droplet without upsizing and you have quietly halved available memory, a real sizing mismatch, not a hypothetical one. Storage tells the same story: Linode's entry tier includes 25 GB, DigitalOcean's entry Droplet includes 10 GiB, and Vultr's cheapest instance includes 10 GB SSD, close enough at the bottom tier that storage rarely trips people up the way RAM does, but worth confirming either way. vCPU count is more consistent across all three at the entry tier: 1 vCPU on DigitalOcean and 1 vCPU on Vultr, so RAM and storage are the two specs worth checking most closely before you provision, not after something falls over.
4. Install and version-match the software stack to your first-step inventory, not to whatever the new provider's base image ships by default. A fresh server image typically defaults to whatever runtime and database versions are current at the time you provision it, which is frequently newer than what has been quietly running untouched on your source server for a long time. Pin the new server to the versions from your inventory first, then plan any upgrade as its own separate step once the migration itself is done.
5. Transfer files directly, server to server. SFTP or rsync over SSH between the two instances is the standard method: it avoids routing your data through a third location and lets you re-run the transfer incrementally if it is interrupted partway through.
6. Export the database, move it, and import it on the new server, then verify it rather than just running it. Check row counts or checksums against the source database after import. A database export that silently drops or truncates data during the transfer is a difficulty risk that looks identical to success right up until someone notices missing records days later.
7. Test the new server before DNS ever points at it. A temporary hosts-file entry on your own machine, or a staging subdomain pointed directly at the new server's IP address, lets you fully exercise the site (forms, admin logins, scheduled jobs) while the live domain still serves traffic from the old server. Do not treat DNS cutover as your test step.
8. Cut DNS over once, and only once, testing passes. With TTL already lowered in the second step, propagation should be fast. Monitor traffic and error logs on the new server closely in the hours immediately after cutover.
9. Keep the old server running, unchanged, for a buffer period before you decommission it. This is your rollback path. If something surfaces on the new server that testing missed, pointing DNS back at an untouched old server is a fast recovery; a decommissioned one is not recoverable at all.

Bandwidth allowances differ meaningfully at the entry tier too, and matter most for sites already pushing real traffic: DigitalOcean's cheapest Droplet includes 500 GiB of transfer, Vultr's cheapest instance includes 0.50 TB/mo, and Linode's entry Nanode includes 1 TB, with egress overage on Linode billed at US$0.005 per GB past that. Match the new server's transfer allowance to your actual traffic before cutover, not to whatever the entry tier happens to include.

What changes when Cloudways is on one end of the move

Moving raw-IaaS files and a database onto Cloudways' Autonomous Micro tier skips most of the third and fourth steps above: Cloudways provisions and manages the underlying server stack for you, and per HD's Cloudways review, the platform offers migration assistance that a raw-IaaS provider simply does not provide. You still need a working file and database export from your source server (that part does not disappear), but the server-administration burden that makes the first, third, and fourth steps the hardest part of a raw-IaaS move is largely absorbed by the platform. That is the trade the Autonomous Micro tier's $14/mo entry price buys: less manual work, in exchange for giving up direct root control over the server underneath. What you land on is 1 vCPU, 1 GB of memory, 25 GB NVMe of storage, and 1 TB of bandwidth on the entry tier; size-check that against your source server's specs the same way you would for a raw-IaaS move, since the managed layer removes administration work, not the need to confirm the destination is actually big enough.

The reverse move, off Cloudways and onto raw IaaS, does not get the same shortcut. You are not just running the raw-IaaS steps above; you are also taking on ongoing server administration responsibility you may not have needed while the managed layer handled it. Budget time to get comfortable with that responsibility as part of the move, not just time for the file transfer itself.

The risk that actually matters

Downtime during DNS cutover and database export errors both get named as migration risks, and both are real, but they are also the risks a careful team already knows to guard against, which is exactly why the second and sixth steps above exist. The risk that actually decides whether a VPS-to-VPS migration goes smoothly is quieter and easier to miss: environment drift between what your application has been running on for a long time and what a freshly provisioned server defaults to. A new instance from any of these three providers typically starts from a current base image, which usually means newer default runtime and database versions than whatever has been running, untouched, on your source server. That mismatch does not look like an outage. It looks like a site that comes up, loads, and then breaks in scattered, hard-to-reproduce ways: a plugin that silently stops working, a query that behaves differently under a newer database version, a deprecated function that the old runtime tolerated and the new one does not. Those failures surface over the days after cutover, not during the migration window itself, which is what makes this the risk worth planning around specifically rather than folding it into a generic "test everything" step. Pin your new server's stack to your source inventory before you move anything onto it, and treat any version upgrade as its own separate, deliberate step, never as a side effect of provisioning.

When to proceed, and when to wait

Proceed with a raw-IaaS-to-raw-IaaS migration when three things are true: you can name the exact runtime and database versions your site currently depends on, you can reproduce those versions on the new server before touching production traffic, and you have a tested rollback: the old server, kept running unchanged for a buffer period after cutover, not decommissioned the same day. If all three hold, the mechanical similarity between DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode means the move itself is routine.

Wait, or reconsider the timing, when any of the following is true: you cannot currently answer what software versions your application depends on and have not budgeted time to find out first, you have no database backup that lives independently of the source host, or you are looking at moving during a high-traffic period where an unexpected environment-drift issue would be expensive to discover in public. None of these are reasons to abandon a migration; they are reasons to fix the gap first, then migrate on a lower-stakes day. A move into Cloudways lowers the bar on the first two conditions considerably, since the platform absorbs the stack-matching work; it does not remove the value of a tested rollback, which still matters regardless of which path you take.

What the move costs, separate from what it costs to run

This page is about migration difficulty, not ongoing hosting cost; see the linked real_cost pages below for the full pricing breakdown on each provider. But the entry-tier price gap is worth anchoring here because it shapes how much room you have to upsize during a move: DigitalOcean's cheapest Droplet runs $4.00, Vultr's cheapest instance runs $2.50/mo, Linode's entry Nanode runs $5.00, and Cloudways' Autonomous Micro tier runs $14/mo. If the third step above means you need to upsize past the tier your old server used, that gap is what determines whether the new server actually costs more than the old one did, not the sticker price of the entry tier alone.

Related reading

Start at the Cloud VPS Hosting hub if you are not sure this is the page you need. Coming from shared hosting rather than switching between VPS providers? See HD's shared-hosting-to-VPS migration guide instead; it answers a different question than this page does. For the full pricing math on each provider named above, see HD's real-cost breakdowns for DigitalOcean Droplets, Vultr Cloud Compute, Linode (Akamai) Cloud Computing, and Cloudways Autonomous (Micro Tier). For the full detail on what Cloudways' managed migration assistance covers, read HD's Cloudways review.