Migrate from WordPress
Migrate from WordPress without losing your pages, posts or rankings.
Paste your WordPress address. Mondovo brings your pages, posts and images across, shows you everything it found before a single design is made, and points every old address at its new page so visitors and Google still find you. Then you choose from three complete designs. No plugin to install, no developer, and nothing to pay until you publish.
Free plan available. No credit card required.
How the move works
Five steps, and the third one is the important one.
Nothing is installed on your WordPress site and nothing about it changes while you work. Your old site stays live until you point your domain at the new one.
- Step one
Paste your address
Give Mondovo the address of your WordPress site. There is nothing to install, no login to share and no downtime to schedule.
- Step two
It reads the site
Pages, posts and their images come across with their structure and content. This is an import of your content, not a copy of the WordPress installation, so plugin and theme code is left behind.
- Step three
You review what it found, before any design exists
Check the pages and content the import found. Correct outdated details, remove pages you no longer need and add anything missing.
- Step four
Three designs are made from that content
All three carry your own words, so you compare real pages rather than templates. Up to ten designs can live on the site, and making a different one live later is a switch, not a rebuild.
- Step five
You publish when you are ready
Old addresses are redirected to the closest new page with permanent (301) redirects, which you can check and edit. A live site is $20 a month with your own domain, hosting and SSL included, and the domain stays registered to you.
The review step decides whether a move goes well. Moves go wrong when someone finds out what did not come across after the new site is already live.
Read this before you move
What comes across, and what does not.
Public pages, posts and images move easily. Anything a plugin was doing, private data and custom code need a plan of their own.
Comes across
- Pages, with their structure
- Posts
- The images on them, copied to our storage, with leftover page-builder code cleaned out
- Your old page addresses, each redirected to the closest new page
- The text and headings, for you to review before anything is designed
Does not come across
- A plugin's logic. Bookings, forms, a customer area, courses and payments exist on Mondovo, but they are set up fresh rather than migrated
- Custom PHP, custom post types built by a developer, and the old theme's code
- Anything that lives in a plugin's own database tables rather than in the pages
- Content behind a login: member-only pages, gated downloads, course material. The customer area here starts empty
- A store's order history
Work out what your site really depends on before you set a date. A brochure site is a short job. A site whose value is in a plugin's logic is a rebuild of that logic, and it should be planned as one. If you are an agency moving a client, quote it that way.
Before and after
What changes when the site moves.
Quoted text belongs to WordPress. Rows are limited to things we could confirm from their own published pages.
A dash means we could not confirm it from WordPress's own published pages, so we make no claim either way. WordPress plugins do a great deal that WordPress itself does not.
| After the move | The WordPress site today | |
|---|---|---|
| Updates, backups and security | Ours. There is no core, no theme and no plugin to keep current, and no backup to take before you touch anything. | "You should always update WordPress to the latest version", with a backup taken first. On a self-hosted install that is somebody's standing monthly job. |
| Hosting, domain and SSL | Included in the $20 a month. Pages publish as static files served from a global network, and the domain stays registered to the client at their own registrar. | WordPress.com hosts it. Self-hosted, you buy the hosting and run it. |
| Changing the design later | Up to ten designs sit on one site's content, and the live one is a switch. The words, the page structure and the per-page SEO settings do not move when the design does. | Change the active theme. "Only one theme from this directory can be Active." |
| Extending it | No plugins, and nothing to install. Forms, the enquiry inbox, contacts, per-page SEO and version history are part of the platform. | "The largest directory of free and open source WordPress plugins." If the site depends on one, this is the reason to stay. |
| Enquiries and forms | Forms with no third-party embeds. Enquiries are emailed to you and filed in the site's own inbox, and become contacts with a timeline. | — |
| Per-page SEO | Titles, descriptions, sitemaps and structured data, set per page. | — |
| Getting the client to sign it off first | A review link that works on desktop and mobile. The client clicks an element on the page and leaves a note against it, or approves the whole site. | — |
Seven rows, all of them checkable against WordPress's own documentation. What a particular plugin adds to a particular site is not something we can source, so it is not printed here.
What it costs
The move is free. The live site is $20 a month.
There is no migration fee and no per-page charge, because the work is the same for us whether the site has six pages or sixty.
The move itself
Free
Reading the site, bringing the pages, posts and images across, the review step and the three generated designs all happen on a draft. Drafts are free, and nothing appears on a bill until you publish. If the result is not good enough, you have spent nothing.
Once it is live
$20 per live site per month
Custom domain, hosting and SSL included. Pages, visitors and form submissions are not billed. Each extra live site is another $20. Three team members are included, then $10 a month each. Agencies can add white-label, API access and the outreach tools for $99 a month. Unpublishing is not destructive, and the domain stays yours at your own registrar.
What we cannot price for you is the second column of the section above. Whatever a plugin was doing has to be replaced, rebuilt or dropped, and that is the part that decides how big the job is.
Real output
What the site looks like on the other side.
Six briefs, six sites, nothing shared between them. Three law practices above; a consultancy, a corporate law practice and a commercial builder below. All of them are demonstrations, not customers.
Before you move
Questions about migrating from WordPress.
How much does it cost to migrate from WordPress?
The move itself is free. Importing the site, reviewing it and generating three designs all happen on a draft that costs nothing. You pay only when the site goes live: $20 a month, with your own domain, hosting and SSL included.
Do I need a developer or a migration service?
Not for the move itself. You paste the address and review what comes back; there is no plugin to install and no server access to hand over. If your site depends on custom plugins or code, budget for setting that functionality up again. If you would rather someone talked it through with you first, use the contact page.
Will I lose my Google rankings?
Every old address is redirected to the closest new page with a permanent (301) redirect, including old .php and .html addresses and WordPress-style links, so visitors and search engines land in the right place. Rows that did not match exactly are marked for you to check. Titles, descriptions, sitemaps and structured data are set per page. Check the redirects before you publish; it is much cheaper done before launch than after.
How long does it take?
The import and the designs take minutes for a typical small-business site. The time that varies is your review, and rebuilding anything a plugin was doing. Review the import before you agree a launch date with anyone.
What happens to my blog posts?
Posts come across with their images and you see them at the review step. You can also bring posts into the blog in bulk from Website → Content → Import. What does not come across is anything a plugin added to them, such as related-post widgets, custom fields or a third-party comment system.
Can my old site stay up while I build?
Yes. Nothing you do here touches the WordPress site, and nothing new is live until you publish it. Your domain moves when you decide it moves, and it stays registered to you at your own registrar.
My WordPress site was hacked. Can I move it to Mondovo?
Yes, and the import helps here: it reads the public pages and posts, not the WordPress installation, so plugin files, themes and server code, where malware usually hides, are never copied. Review the imported content carefully and remove any links or pages you did not write, because a hack can add spam to the pages themselves. Keep the old site offline or cleaned while you build, and change every password it used.
Is the site more secure after the move?
There is no WordPress core, theme, plugin or PHP version to keep updated, so the monthly patching job, and the emergency one when a critical flaw is announced, goes away. Published pages are served as finished files from a global network, and platform security is our job. No site is risk-free, but there is much less on it for anyone to attack.
Can I leave Mondovo later?
Yes. You can download your published site as ready-to-host files from Site settings → Export site, and your domain stays registered to you. Forms, bookings and checkout only work while the site stays with Mondovo.
Can I look after the site myself afterwards?
Yes. Text and images are edited on the page, enquiries arrive in an inbox, and version history lets you restore a page if something goes wrong. There is no admin to keep updated, which is usually what had gone wrong on the old site. Agencies can give a client edit access to just the parts they should change.
Related reading
- Is WordPress secure? An honest answer for business ownersWordPress itself can be secure, but most WordPress sites are only as safe as their last update.
- WordPress site hacked? What to do in the next hourA calm, step-by-step plan for a hacked WordPress site, and how to stop it happening again.
- That big WordPress security scare, in plain EnglishSerious flaws were found in the software behind most WordPress sites. What it means for yours.
- When the tool that protects your WordPress site gets hackedThe UpdraftPlus breach: what happened, and what to do today.
- Mondovo vs WordPressAn honest side-by-side, including when WordPress is the better choice.
WordPress is a trade mark of its owner. It is named here to identify the software being migrated from. Nothing on this page implies any relationship with or endorsement by the WordPress project or Automattic.
The cheapest way to find out
Paste your WordPress address and see what comes back.
The draft costs nothing, so you can see exactly what the import found, and what it did not, before you change anything on your live site.