If you have a hosting provider already, you may find that you are not happy with the services you have, maybe that they don't supply sufficient storage space, not enough bandwidth, upgrade options are way to expensive, usually it's because up time is bad and they do not provide a good enough customer support service. If this is happening to you, then the best thing to do is to change your hosting provider.

Many people think that changing hosting providers is a lot of hassle and that they will have too much disruption to their current services, the truth is it's easy and you need not to have too much down time, if any, providing you make the right choices. It's much better to make the decision to change to a new web hosting provider than to stay with one which continues to give you problems.Changing hosts can easily be done by following the steps below.

Check out new web hosting providers

If your absolutely sure you wish to change hosting providers, start by having a look around, there are many to choose from so have a google search and check them out. Don't cut your ties with your current provider just yet, use this time to checkout different deals, packages and plans which suit your specific needs.

Prepare for the move

Be careful not to rush things, you don't want your current hosting company to cut you off just yet, you might lose all your valuable files. The next thing to do is make backups of all your files. Start to move all your files and databases into local copies on your computer, this way you won't lose any important files or information when your current hosting provider cuts off your access, you may want to backup your emails as well.

Choosing a new provider

Once you have all your files backed up, the next stage is to choose a provider and prepare for the move. The most important thing to think about is not to make the same mistake you made the first time around. By this point you would have looked at a few companies which provide the kind of hosting packages you need, make a short list of about five different companies, then just check out personal referrals, references and testimonials, have a look at web hosting review sites and see what experiences other people have had with that particular provider.

Make the move

Once you have chosen your new hosting provider, its time to move out. Begin by moving all your files onto your new server, once you have all your files uploaded the next thing to do is to setup your email accounts on the new server too. At this point you should still have all your services working with your old provider. As soon as your website files and data are all safely move onto your new hosts servers, all your email accounts are setup and ready on the new server you are now ready to point your domain at the new hosting account, to do this you will have to change the nameservers on your domain name to your new hosting providers nameservers.

Nameserver changes can take up to 72 hours to fully propagate and take effect, although you will usually see results in 3-6 hours. Once changes have taken effect you can now close your hosting account with your previous web hosting provider.