How to move a site from WP Engine to Kinsta

What moves and what stays behind

Step 1: prepare on WP Engine

• Create a manual backup checkpoint of production in the User Portal and prepare a full ZIP. WP Engine keeps prepared ZIPs downloadable for 7 days and keeps 30 days of backups.
• Ask WP Engine support to export your redirect rules. WP Engine says support can save a .txt copy to /_wpeprivate, which you download over SFTP.
• Record your cache exclusions from the environment's Cache page, plus any cookie exclusions support set for you.
• Check whether Alternate cron is turned on under Utilities. If it is, wp-config.php contains define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true).
• If you use WP Engine's two-factor authentication, add Kinsta's migrations email to the account before requesting a migration; Kinsta says 2FA can otherwise block its team's access.
• If the site uses WP Engine LargeFS for media, say so in the special instructions of Kinsta's migration request.
• Lower the TTL on your DNS records well before cutover.

Step 2: migrate to Kinsta

Kinsta's migrations are free. You supply your current host's hostname, username, password and SFTP connection details, or a backup containing both files and database. Kinsta migrates Monday to Friday, not at weekends. Kinsta says most migrations take 1 to 3 hours plus 1 to 3 hours of review, with e-commerce and membership sites in maintenance mode, and are usually completed within one business day. An expedited migration costs $49 per site, with a goal of finishing within 8 hours and a refund if that is missed. Kinsta states that configuring third-party services and setting up email are not included.

On a course or membership site, the migration copies the database at one moment. Every enrollment, lesson completion and order on WP Engine after that moment is not on Kinsta. Kinsta does not document a final database refresh, so either keep the old site in maintenance mode from the start of the migration until DNS changes, or plan to export and import the database again yourself at cutover.

Step 3: recreate the settings that did not move

Redirects. Convert WP Engine's export to Kinsta's CSV format: status code, domain or all, redirect-from path, redirect-to URL, and optional country and city. Kinsta applies regex automatically, so start each from-path with ^, and matching is case-sensitive unless you add (?i). Imports add to existing rules rather than replacing them. Anything that matched on query strings needs a Kinsta support request. Clear the cache after adding redirects.

Cache bypass. WP Engine skipped its cart, checkout, wp-admin and logged-in cookie pages automatically, and you may have added your own LMS paths there. Kinsta's site caching documentation says it skips dynamic pages ineligible for caching such as checkout, and that support can add bypass rules for pages such as login, account and registration. Send Kinsta support your list: login, registration, account, course dashboard, quiz, checkout and any custom membership pages.

Cron. If DISABLE_WP_CRON came across in wp-config.php, WordPress will not run scheduled tasks on page loads, and nothing on Kinsta replaces WP Engine's Alternate cron automatically unless a cron job calls wp-cron.php. Either remove the define or add a cron job at the bottom of the site's crontab over SSH (Kinsta's minimum interval is 5 minutes), or ask Kinsta support to add one. Then confirm renewals, drip releases and scheduled emails run.

Step 4: test before DNS

• Point your own computer at the Kinsta copy, for example with a hosts-file entry or curl --resolve using the IP address MyKinsta shows, so you test under the real domain.
• Log in as a test student; open a lesson, submit a quiz, complete a lesson and check the progress bar.
• Run a checkout with the payment plugin in test mode, then switch back to live keys.
• Trigger a password reset and a receipt, and check headers to see which service sent them.
• Test five or more old URLs from your redirect list.
• Check scheduled actions in your LMS or WooCommerce for jobs that ran on Kinsta.

Step 5: cut over

Add the domain in MyKinsta. Kinsta offers a quick setup that may cause 1 to 3 minutes of downtime, and an avoid-downtime method: add the _cf-custom-hostname TXT record and the _acme-challenge CNAME first so the domain is verified and the free SSL certificate is ready, then point the domain. That method can take up to 1.5 hours to go live. Use A records, or CNAMEs if your DNS is on Cloudflare, with values copied from MyKinsta, and remove conflicting records for the same hostname.

Make the domain primary in MyKinsta. Kinsta notes this does not change where DNS resolves and does not redirect the other version, so add a 301 for www or non-www under Redirects. Kinsta notes propagation depends on TTL; a record with a 24-hour TTL can take that long.

For a membership site, freeze the WP Engine copy during this window with maintenance mode, so no new orders or enrollments land on the old server while DNS changes.

Step 6: after cutover

Update payment webhooks if their URLs contain anything host-specific, and confirm webhook deliveries succeed from the processor's dashboard. Set SPF and DMARC records if you rely on Kinsta's transactional email; Kinsta says custom domains need them, and it recommends a third-party provider when you need DMARC alignment or more volume than your plan allows.

Before cancelling WP Engine, download a final full backup ZIP and keep it with your offsite backups. Once the account closes, WP Engine's 30 days of backups are no longer yours to download.

Sources & verification

Product details and prices can change. Check the linked provider before buying.

1. Kinsta: Migrating to Kinsta Accessed 30 Oct 2026
2. Kinsta: Redirect rules Accessed 30 Oct 2026
3. Kinsta: Cron jobs Accessed 30 Oct 2026
4. Kinsta: Site caching Accessed 30 Oct 2026
5. Kinsta: Transactional email Accessed 30 Oct 2026
6. Kinsta: Add a domain Accessed 30 Oct 2026
7. WP Engine: Redirects Accessed 30 Oct 2026
8. WP Engine: Cache Accessed 30 Oct 2026
9. WP Engine: WP-Cron and Alternate cron Accessed 30 Oct 2026
10. WP Engine: Backup and restore Accessed 30 Oct 2026