Free migration: what you must hand over, and the downtime it does not rule out
Answer first: A free migration is not a standalone freebie: it is a service unlocked by buying a hosting plan first, and Hostinger's own pages name exactly three things the customer must supply before the move can start - a working link to the current provider's admin area, the account username and password (an administrator account in the case of WordPress), and enough free disk space at the old host to support the move. Sites built on closed-code website builders such as Wix, Squarespace and Shopify are stated as not migratable at all, and a domain move requires that you own the domain and that it has been active for 60 days or more. On downtime, nothing checked promises zero: the migration page's headline offers migration "without hassle or downtime", yet that same page's FAQ says you "might experience some downtime after the migration during the DNS propagation period", and the cloud page only offers to "minimize downtime". No page checked states a downtime limit, a completion guarantee, or any remedy if the move goes wrong - so the free migration is best treated as a convenience with an unpriced risk, not a guaranteed risk-free move.
Published: 2026-09-23 00:10
What this guide adds
This page separates two things throughout. First, what Hostinger's own pages state, each statement tied to the URL it came from and quoted only in short fragments. Second, the comparison and arithmetic this site ran on top of those statements, labelled (derived). The 60x timing gap and the day-count reasoning come only from figures the provider prints on its own pages. No price, discount, migration fee, downtime duration, credit amount, success rate or customer count has been estimated, converted or inferred, and the cost of the overlap period is left as a formula because the previous provider's rate is not published by Hostinger.
What you must provide before the move can start
Hostinger's migration page answers this question in its own FAQ, and the list is short. It names three items, quoted here as published:
One, "a working link to your current provider's admin area, such as a login screen or a wp-admin link."
Two, "your login details - the username and password. For WordPress websites, make sure the username is an admin user."
Three, "enough disk space at your previous hosting provider to support the migration", with the page adding that you can find this in your control panel.
The same FAQ adds that the provider's "dedicated migration team can also migrate a multisite WordPress website", and it offers a manual route as an alternative, in which the customer downloads the website files and the database and uploads both, with the warning that if you upload only one of the two, "your website won't work."
What the list does not contain is as informative as what it does. There is no published maximum site size, no minimum plan tier named as a condition of the free service, no named list of source control panels, and no statement of who performs the DNS change. The free service is therefore documented as a credential handover with an unspecified upper bound.
What is excluded: the sites and domains that do not qualify
Two exclusions are stated outright.
The first is platform-based. The migration FAQ states that if you build websites using any website builder, you will not be able to migrate them, because those are "closed-code platforms", and it names Wix, Squarespace and Shopify among the examples. The provider's own suggested alternative is to start again with its AI website builder and copy the content across - which is a rebuild, not a migration.
The second is domain-based. On moving a domain, the page states that the guide applies "if you have full ownership of your domain and it has been active for 60 days or more." A domain registered more recently than that does not meet the stated condition, and no workaround is published.
There is also a per-site condition rather than a cap: the number of sites is unlimited with the plan, but "for multiple migrations, you'll have to make a separate request for each website." Unlimited capacity, one request at a time.
Two published completion times, 60x apart (derived)
This section is this site's comparison of two statements the provider publishes on two of its own pages. Both pages describe the same free migration service.
The cloud hosting page, in its feature list, states: "Send a request and we move as many sites as you need, usually in about 20 minutes. Your site stays online while we switch."
The migration page, in its FAQ, states that "a simple, automatic WordPress website migration is typically done in less than two hours", and that "it usually takes more than 20 hours for cPanel-based websites that are built with other open-source CMS."
The arithmetic is simple and worth stating plainly: 20 hours is 1,200 minutes, and 1,200 divided by 20 is 60. So the shortest figure one page publishes is 60 times smaller than the longest figure the other page publishes, for the same service on the same provider's site, read within minutes of each other.
The honest qualification is that these two figures may describe different scenarios - a small automatic WordPress move against a larger cPanel move on a different CMS - and the provider is not necessarily contradicting itself. But neither page states the scope that would reconcile them. The cloud page's 20-minute figure carries no platform or size condition at all, and the migration page's figures are not cross-referenced from the cloud page. A buyer who reads only the cloud page forms an expectation that the other page's own FAQ puts two orders of magnitude away, and nothing on either page tells them which estimate applies to their site.
The no-downtime claim at the top is softened at the bottom (derived)
The migration page makes a strong claim in its headline and a weaker one in its FAQ. The comparison below is this site's reading, not a quotation of intent.
Stated at the top of the migration page: migration is automated "without hassle or downtime", and the provider will migrate your site "quickly and securely, keeping it up and running throughout." Stated in the same page's FAQ: the website "will work smoothly during the migration process", and "however, you might experience some downtime after the migration during the DNS propagation period."
The cloud page shows the same pattern. Its feature list says "your site stays online while we switch." Its FAQ says the site "will still be online during the migration process", and that the provider will "help you prepare for DNS propagation to minimize downtime."
Two things follow from putting those sentences side by side. First, both pages concede that downtime is possible after the switch, in the DNS propagation window, and the word used on the cloud page is "minimize" - which by definition does not mean eliminate. Second, and more usefully for a buyer, no page checked puts a number on it: there is no published downtime duration, no ceiling expressed in minutes or hours, and no stated condition under which downtime counts as a failure. The migration service itself also carries no published availability figure. The 99.9% uptime statement on the cloud page describes the hosting service, not the migration, and the two should not be read as the same promise.
What the free migration still costs you (derived, deliberately unpriced)
The word free applies to the migration service, not to the purchase it depends on. The migration page states it directly: "All you need to do is purchase a hosting plan, and you can then enjoy unlimited free WordPress and other website migrations to Hostinger." On the same page, the plan the cloud page pairs with its migration claim - Cloud Startup - is listed at $7.99 per month on a 48-month term, renewing at $25.99 per month, with the page noting that all plans are paid upfront and that prices are listed without VAT.
The second cost is the overlap. The migration FAQ advises that you usually do not have to inform your current provider, "however, make sure not to cancel your hosting service before the migration is fully completed." That instruction means two hosting bills run at the same time for the length of the migration. Because the migration page also tells you not to cancel early, the free service carries a real cost whose size is the previous provider's rate multiplied by the migration window.
That window is exactly the quantity the two pages disagree about by a factor of 60, and the previous provider's rate is not published by Hostinger at all. So this page does not print a number for it. It prints the shape of the cost instead: cost of overlap = previous host's rate per day x days until the provider confirms the transfer. The provider states it will email you "as soon as the transfer is successful", which is when the overlap is meant to end. The reason this matters is that the shortest published estimate makes the overlap nearly free, while the longest makes it a bill worth planning for - and the page that publishes the long estimate is the same page that tells you not to cancel.
The gap that matters most: no published remedy
The migration gap is not the prerequisites, which are clear, or the exclusions, which are stated. It is the absence of any remedy tied to the migration itself.
The migration page advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee, and the refund paragraph describes it as a refund window on your payment with the note that "exclusions may apply". That is a purchase refund window, not a migration remedy. Neither page checked states a credit, a compensation, a guaranteed re-run, or any remedy at all for a migration that runs long, fails partway, or leaves the site unreachable during DNS propagation.
Nor is a success rate published. The migration page's market comparison table assigns free migration an "included" value against a claimed market range of $30-$100 per site, inside a headline claim of saving $800-$2,400 or more per year against a stated market cost of $1,067-$2,692 annually. Those are the provider's own estimates: the ranges name no vendors and cite no survey, so they should be read as a marketing claim rather than a measured market price. What they do not do is quantify the risk on the other side of the transaction.
The practical conclusion is that the free migration shifts a credential handover to the provider while leaving the buyer holding the timing risk and the DNS risk, with no published remedy if either goes badly. That is not a reason to avoid it. It is a reason to schedule it, and to keep your own backup.
A checklist to run before you submit the request
Five items, all of them derived from the provider's own stated conditions rather than from anything measured here.
Confirm the platform qualifies. If the site was built in a closed-code builder such as Wix, Squarespace or Shopify, the stated answer is no, and the published fallback is a rebuild.
Confirm you hold the credentials, not just access. The stated requirement is a username and password with administrator rights for WordPress, plus a working link to the admin area. A staff account without admin rights does not match the published requirement.
Check the old host's disk allowance before you ask. The stated prerequisite is enough space at the previous provider, and that is a limit you can read in your own control panel.
Take your own backup first. The manual route published by the provider requires both the files and the database, and warns the site will not work if either is missing. Having both, off the provider's hands, is the only remedy for migration failure that this check found published anywhere.
Plan the overlap in money and in days. Do not cancel the old plan until the provider's confirmation email arrives, and decide in advance which of the two published timelines you are budgeting against - 20 minutes or more than 20 hours.
Finally, verify reachability after the switch rather than assuming it, because the only statement the provider makes about the period after the move is that downtime might occur during DNS propagation.
What this check cannot tell you
The unknowns are worth naming, because they are the part a deal page leaves out.
No page checked carried a machine-readable published or modified date, so the age of the text cannot be verified from metadata. Prices and statements were read on 23 September 2026 (UTC), and rotating offers and plan pricing can change after that.
No downtime duration, ceiling or remedy is published for the migration, so the risk cannot be sized from these pages.
No tax-inclusive checkout total is published for the plans quoted here; the pages state that displayed rates exclude applicable taxes and that prices are listed without VAT, and savings are stated to vary by plan, term and location.
No migration success rate, average handling time distribution, or customer count for migrations is published. The 20-minute and 20-hour figures are the only two completion statements found, and neither is given with a stated scope.
And this check says nothing about whether the free migration is better or worse than a paid one elsewhere. That would require the same prerequisites, timings and remedies from other providers, which is outside the two pages examined here.