How to Migrate from HostGator India to Hostinger Without Downtime

Why people leave HostGator India

The two reasons we hear: renewal price and speed. HostGator India shared plans renew high and the servers show their age on WordPress sites with page builders. Hostinger's Mumbai data centre with LiteSpeed and NVMe is a measurable upgrade (see our speed tests), and the four-year lock keeps the price down.

What is different about HostGator

HostGator uses cPanel; Hostinger uses hPanel. That changes how you take the backup and where email lives:

• cPanel's Backup Wizard produces a full account backup that includes email accounts. Hostinger cannot restore a full cPanel backup directly, but it can import the home directory and database from it.
• Email mailboxes at HostGator are on the same server as the site. When you move, you recreate the mailboxes on Hostinger (Hostinger Email is included) and copy old mail with an IMAP tool if you need history.
• Many HostGator India domains are registered with HostGator or BigRock. You change nameservers there; no domain transfer is needed.

Step 1: Inventory

Log in to cPanel and write down: WordPress sites and their database names, email accounts, forwarders, cron jobs, and every DNS record from Zone Editor. Screenshot the Zone Editor page.

Step 2: Back up

WordPress: install All-in-One WP Migration or Duplicator and export. Or use hPanel > Migrate website with the WordPress admin login and let Hostinger pull it.

Everything else: cPanel > Backup > Download a Home Directory Backup, and download each database from Backup > Download a MySQL Database Backup.

Step 3: Restore on Hostinger

Add the website in hPanel with your domain, server location India. For WordPress, import the plugin export or let the migration tool finish. For other sites, upload the home directory contents to public_html and import the database via phpMyAdmin, then update the config file with the new database credentials.

Step 4: Email

In hPanel > Emails, create the same mailbox names. If you need historical mail, use an IMAP migration (Hostinger's email import or a desktop client) while the HostGator mailboxes are still live. Reconfigure devices with Hostinger's IMAP/SMTP settings after DNS switches.

Step 5: DNS records

Recreate MX, SPF (TXT), DKIM and any CNAME records in hPanel DNS. Hostinger sets the site's A record itself.

Step 6: Test, then switch nameservers

Check the site on the temporary URL. Then change nameservers at the registrar (HostGator, BigRock, GoDaddy) to Hostinger's. Keep HostGator active for a week so nothing is lost during propagation.

Step 7: After the move

Force HTTPS in hPanel, confirm the SSL, send test emails both ways, resubmit the sitemap in Search Console, and set up LiteSpeed cache in WordPress. Then cancel HostGator before its next billing date.

HostGator-specific problems

• Softaculous-installed WordPress with a custom table prefix: make sure the export includes wp-config values, or set the prefix manually on import.
• Old PHP version: HostGator India accounts are often on PHP 7.x. Hostinger defaults to 8.x; a very old theme or plugin may need updating first.
• .htaccess rules for HostGator caching: remove them; LiteSpeed handles caching.