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Whether you're moving a single client from your old reseller plan to your new ipxcore one, consolidating two servers, or doing a full provider switch, WHM has built-in tools that handle 95% of cases without you needing to touch the command line. This article walks through the methods in order of preference.

Method 1: Transfer Tool (best for whole-server moves)

WHM's Transfer Tool moves multiple accounts at once with a wizard interface. Best for: moving lots of accounts, or moving to a brand-new server.

1. On the destination server (the new one), log in to WHM.
2. Go to Transfer or Restore Tool → Transfer Tool.
3. Enter the source server's details:
   • Remote Server Address: hostname or IP of the old server
   • SSH Port: usually 22 (or 2222 on cPanel servers with custom port)
   • Authentication: root password (preferred if available) or root SSH key
4. Click Fetch Account List. WHM connects, lists every cPanel account on the source.
5. Tick the accounts to transfer. For a full server move, check the box at the top.
6. Configure options:
   • Live transfer: ON if you want minimal downtime (the source stays up; we sync the delta at the end)
   • Express Transfer: OFF (it skips email, which you almost always want)
   • Copy DNS Configuration: ON
7. Click Copy. The transfer runs in the background; you can close the browser.

Time estimate: ~5 minutes per GB on a 1 Gbps link. A 100 GB transfer takes about an hour.

Method 2: Account-to-account transfer (single account)

For moving one account between two existing WHM servers:

1. On the destination server: Transfer or Restore Tool → Copy an Account from Another Server.
2. Enter the source server hostname, SSH port, and root credentials.
3. Pick the cPanel username from the dropdown of accounts on the source.
4. Click Copy.

Faster than the multi-account Transfer Tool for single accounts because it doesn't enumerate the whole server.

Method 3: Backup + restore (no SSH access between servers)

If you can't set up SSH between source and destination (different providers with restrictive firewalls, or a one-way migration where you've lost root on the source), use a manual backup-and-restore:

1. On the source: log in to cPanel as the user. Generate a Full Account Backup (Backup → Generate Full Backup → Home Directory destination).
2. Download the resulting backup-DATE_user.tar.gz file via FTP or File Manager.
3. Upload the file to the destination server (SFTP into /home as root, or place it in your reseller account's home directory and use WHM's restore).
4. On the destination: WHM → Transfer or Restore Tool → Restore a Full Backup/cpmove File. Browse to the file and click Restore.

This works between any two cPanel servers regardless of network connectivity.

DNS strategy: minimize downtime

Most "migration downtime" isn't actually server downtime — it's DNS propagation lag. Strategy:

1. Lower TTL on your DNS records 24-48 hours before the migration. Set them to 300 seconds (5 minutes). This shrinks the worst-case propagation window.
2. Run the transfer. Source server keeps serving traffic during this.
3. Verify the new copy. Test the destination using a temporary URL or by editing your local hosts file. Confirm the site, email, and databases all work.
4. Update DNS. Switch nameservers (or A records) to the new server. With 300-second TTL, ~95% of visitors hit the new server within 10 minutes.
5. Wait 48 hours with both servers running. Stragglers with cached DNS will resolve to the old server until their cache expires.
6. Decommission the old server. Verify access logs show no recent traffic, then cancel.

What gets transferred (and what doesn't)

WHM's transfer tools handle:

• All home-directory files
• All MySQL databases and users
• Email accounts, mailboxes, filters, forwarders, autoresponders
• FTP accounts
• DNS zone files
• Cron jobs
• SSL certificates (re-issued via AutoSSL after DNS points to new server)
• cPanel password (preserved)
• Subdomains, addon domains, parked domains

What doesn't transfer automatically:

• Custom server-level config (Apache, php.ini overrides done outside cPanel) — you have to re-do these on the new server
• Email in IMAP folders that arrived between the transfer start and DNS cutover — mitigated by Live Transfer mode, which does a final delta sync
• Anything outside the cPanel account (data in /root, /etc, custom services, etc.)

Common pitfalls

• Username collision: if the username already exists on the destination, the transfer fails. Either delete the destination account first, or use the rename option in the transfer tool.
• SSH connection refused: source server has SSH locked down to specific IPs. Ask their support to whitelist your destination server's IP.
• Disk full during restore: always verify the destination has 2x the source backup size of free space (cPanel extracts, then commits).
• Email arriving on the old server post-cutover: if you didn't use Live Transfer, you may have a few hours of mail stranded on the old server. Re-export those mailboxes manually before decommissioning.

Need help?

Migrations are stressful. Open a ticket with the source server details and we'll do the migration for you free of charge — we do hundreds of migrations a month and have seen every weird edge case.