Migrating your server between hosts without losing anything

Migrating a server is scarier than it deserves to be. Done in the right order the whole thing usually takes under half an hour, and most of that is waiting for files to copy.

Start by stopping the source server. It's tempting to copy while it's live so nobody loses access, but a world copied mid-write ends up corrupt with a very high probability. Announce the window ahead of time and shut it down.

Download the whole folder over SFTP, not just the world: configuration, plugins and their data files usually hold things you'd otherwise write off. If you use a database, export the SQL dump at the same moment so its state matches the files.

Upload everything to the new server, boot it once without giving anyone the address, and read the logs. Once you've confirmed it loads clean, update your subdomain's DNS. If you keep the same domain, propagation is a matter of minutes.

Leave the old server paid up for another week. It costs little and it's the only safety net that helps if a problem shows up on day three.