Migration guide
How to migrate from WP Engine to UpperLevel
WP Engine is a premium managed WordPress host. If you have decided it is time to go, here is exactly what the move looks like: five steps, four of them ours. Our team does the hands-on work for free, you approve a preview, and your visitors never notice the switch.
- 111 5.0-star reviews
- Since 2016
- Human support in under five minutes
Why people make this move
What pushes WP Engine customers to switch
If you are leaving WP Engine over surprise overage bills, slow premium-priced support, relentless upsells, and a first-year rate that jumps at renewal, UpperLevel is the clean swap: free hands-on migration, sub-5-minute human support, and no renewal hikes or visit-metered overage charges, backed by a track record since 2016 and 111 perfect 5.0-star reviews.
Visitor-based overage fees ($2 per 1,000 extra visits) that are auto-charged to the card, often with little or no advance warning, and a visit-counting method that can run higher than the customer’s own analytics. Surprise bills are a recurring complaint.
Inconsistent support for a premium price. Live chat wait times are unpredictable (sometimes minutes, sometimes long), and phone support is locked behind higher tiers. BBB and Trustpilot reviews cite unresolved tickets (for example repeated 500 errors) and slow billing-department responses.
Aggressive, persistent upselling from account managers. Reviewers describe pressure (sometimes with cherry-picked metrics) to move onto more expensive dedicated or Core plans, with the upsold options characterized as expensive.
Also cited by departing WP Engine customers
- Renewal and first-year price step-up. Headline pricing is promotional first-year only, so the second-year bill rises to standard rates, and pricing transparency around the real long-term cost is frequently criticized.
- Migration friction. The WP Engine Site Migration plugin is widely reported to stall (often at 2 to 5 percent), time out on larger uploads or plugins, or report a false success on incomplete transfers, forcing manual SSH cleanup. WP Engine also disallows certain plugins (some caching and backup tools), which can break existing setups.
Want the full cost and support comparison? Read UpperLevel vs WP Engine
Before you start
Check your WP Engine renewal date first
The single most expensive migration mistake is timing: getting auto-renewed into another term days before you leave. Here is how WP Engine handles renewal, from sourced, dated references:
WP Engine’s advertised plan prices are explicitly first-year or promotional rates. Its own plans page marks the headline figures with an asterisk denoting First year pricing, with standard (higher) rates applying thereafter. The exact renewal uplift is not disclosed on WP Engine’s site. Independent sources report the renewal step-up is real (one published example shows a Startup intro about $27/mo renewing about $35/mo, roughly a 30 percent step-up) and that renewal rates are often negotiable if you push back 60 to 90 days before renewal; WP Engine also refreshed its standard renewal rates for renewals on or after March 11, 2026. So the verified pattern is: discounted intro year, then a step up to standard pricing at renewal, the magnitude of which varies by plan and negotiation.
Details are reviewed before publishing, but figures change. Confirm your own renewal date and rate inside your WP Engine account before you schedule the move.
The plan
Leaving WP Engine in five steps
This is the whole process. You do step one, share access in step two, and approve the preview in step four. We do the rest.
- Step 1
Start your UpperLevel order and tell us about your WP Engine setup
Pick a plan, or call and we will help you choose. Tell us your domain, that you are coming from WP Engine, and anything unusual about your site, like a store, a membership area, or custom code. That is all the preparation there is.
- Step 2
Hand us your WP Engine login or a recent backup
We need a way to fetch your site: either temporary access to your WP Engine dashboard or a full backup export. Credentials are used only for the move, and we confirm with you before touching anything.
- Step 3
We copy your files, database, and email
Our team copies everything off WP Engine onto NVMe storage tuned for your site: files, database, and mailboxes where they apply. You keep working as usual, because your live site stays untouched while we work on the copy.
- Step 4
Review your site on a private preview
Before anything changes publicly, you get a preview link to click through your migrated site. Forms, store checkout, logins, we test them with you. Nothing goes live until you say it is right.
- Step 5
We flip DNS with no downtime, then you cancel
When you approve, we point your domain at UpperLevel with a cutover timed so visitors never see an outage. Only after your site is verified live should you cancel the old WP Engine plan, so there is never a gap.
Worth having handy before step two: your WP Engine dashboard login, access to wherever your domain is registered (for the DNS update), and any wp-admin credentials for the site itself. Missing one? Start anyway — we will find the path together on the phone.
After the move
What week one looks like on this side
The move is the start, not the finish. From the first night, daily backups run with 30-day retention, your SSL certificate renews itself, and malware scanning with unlimited removal watches the site you just brought over. Your invoice will read the same number next year, because the renewal price is the signup price. And when you have a question, the people who physically performed your WP Engine migration are the same ones answering the phone in under five minutes.
All included, all free
What moves with you
- Your full site: files, themes, plugins, and uploads
- Your database, copied and checked row for row
- Permalinks and internal URLs preserved, so search rankings carry over
- Mailboxes and forwarders, where your email lives with your host
- PHP version matched to what your site runs today
- Free SSL issued and forced before the cutover
- DNS handled for you, timed for zero downtime
- A human on the line the whole way, in under five minutes
Questions
The WP Engine move, answered
- How long does a WP Engine migration take?
- Most moves are finished within a day of us getting access, and we agree the timing with you up front. Larger or more complex sites can take longer, and we tell you that before we start, not after.
- Do I need to cancel my WP Engine account first?
- No, and please do not. Keep WP Engine active until your site is verified live on UpperLevel, so your site and email never have a gap. Once you confirm everything works, cancel the old plan and keep the difference.
- Will my site go down during the move?
- No. We work on a copy while your current site keeps running, test that copy on a private preview, and time the DNS cutover so visitors are never staring at an error page.
- What does it cost to leave WP Engine?
- Nothing on our side: the migration is free, with no per-site fee. Check your WP Engine renewal date before you start, because cancelling right after an auto-renewal usually means asking them for a refund instead of just not being charged.
- Can I move more than one site off WP Engine?
- Yes. Freelancers and agencies regularly bring batches of client sites across. Tell us the inventory up front and we sequence the moves so nothing overlaps, with each site getting the same preview-then-cutover treatment. Our Pro tier covers up to three sites.
Moving from somewhere else?
Guides for other hosts
Ready to be done with WP Engine?
Free white-glove migration, human support in under five minutes, and a 45-day money-back guarantee. Start today and your site can be moved, tested, and live before your next WP Engine invoice.