Migrating a website from cPanel to Kapsule

This guide covers moving a WordPress or PHP website from a cPanel host to Kapsule. The process takes 30–90 minutes depending on your site's size.

Before you start

• Keep your old hosting active until the migration is complete and verified
• Note your old host's MySQL credentials (from cPanel → phpMyAdmin or wp-config.php)
• Have your domain's DNS login ready for the final step

Step 1, Create your site in KPanel

1. Go to Websites and click Add Website (or follow the plan upgrade flow if you don't have a hosting plan)
2. Choose your site type (WordPress if migrating a WP site)
3. Complete the wizard, your site is provisioned with a temporary *.kapsulesites.com URL

Step 2, Export your files from cPanel

In your old cPanel:

1. Go to File Manager or use FTP to download your site files
2. For WordPress: download the entire public_html folder (or the subfolder your WP site lives in)
3. Include wp-config.php, you'll update the database credentials after import

Alternatively, use cPanel's Backup Wizard to generate a full backup download.

Step 3, Upload files to Kapsule

1. In KPanel, open your site and go to Files → SFTP
2. Copy the SFTP credentials shown (host, username, password, port)
3. Open FileZilla or your preferred SFTP client and connect
4. Upload your site files to the /htdocs/ directory

Step 4, Export your database from cPanel

In your old host's cPanel:

1. Open phpMyAdmin
2. Click your database in the left panel
3. Click Export → Quick → Go
4. Download the .sql file

Step 5, Import the database in Kapsule

1. In KPanel, go to Files → Database
2. Click Open phpMyAdmin (no password needed, SSO login)
3. Click your database name in the left panel
4. Click Import, choose your .sql file, and click Go

Step 6, Update wp-config.php

Open wp-config.php in the File Manager (Files → File Manager) and update the database credentials:

define('DB_NAME', 'your-new-db-name');       // from Database tab
define('DB_USER', 'your-new-db-user');       // from Database tab
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'your-new-password');  // from Database tab
define('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1');

Step 7, Test on the temporary URL

Visit your site at its *.kapsulesites.com URL. If it loads correctly, the migration is working.

For WordPress: you may need to run a search-replace for the old domain. Use WordPress → Console and run:

search-replace 'olddomain.com' 'newdomain.com' --dry-run

Remove --dry-run once you've confirmed the replacements look correct.

Step 8, Point your domain to Kapsule

When everything looks good on the temporary URL:

1. In KPanel, go to Domain on your site and connect your custom domain
2. Update your domain's nameservers to Kapsule's nameservers (shown in the Domains section of KPanel), or add a CNAME/A record pointing to Kapsule's IP

DNS propagation takes a few minutes to a few hours. Your site will go live on the new host once DNS resolves.