What leaving looks like: the export, the 30 days, and the migration.

I wrote a post about why I host my clients’ sites and exactly what you get in writing when I do. It would be a bit rich to write that and then leave my own exit terms as something you have to email and ask about.

So this is the whole thing, in order, with numbers. It is what happens if you are on my managed hosting and you decide to go somewhere else.

Cancelling

You cancel any time, free, and you do not have to give me a reason. An email is enough. There is no notice period to serve, no form to fill in, and no retention call to sit through first.

I am deliberately not putting an argument in front of you. If you have decided, my job is to make the next 30 days go smoothly, not to talk you out of it.

What it costs

Nothing. There is no exit fee. There is no committed term on hosting, no minimum period, and nothing to buy your way out of.

Billing stops at the end of the month you have already paid for. You are not charged again after that, and I do not prorate anything back the other way either. The month you paid for is the month you get.

The 30 days

After billing stops, your site stays up for another 30 days.

This is the part I care most about, because it is the part that decides whether leaving is calm or frantic. A month is enough time to pick a host, stand the site up there, check it properly, and move DNS on a day that suits you. A deadline of “it goes off when you stop paying” would force you to do all of that at once, and rushing a migration is how sites end up half-broken and half-indexed with two versions live at the same time.

Nothing changes during those 30 days. The site is up, it is backed up, and if something breaks it is still mine to fix.

To be plain about the mechanics rather than vague: at the end of the 30 days I take the site down and remove it from my account. That is something I do, on a date you can count on a calendar, not something that happens to you automatically when a payment fails.

The export

A complete export of your files and your database, free, in every case, with no conditions attached.

Not “your content.” Not “a copy of your pages.” Files and database is the entire site, which is what you need to put it up somewhere else without rebuilding anything.

It is free whether you are leaving on good terms or bad ones, whether you are three days into the 30 or twenty-nine, and whether or not you take me up on the migration below. It is in my Terms rather than being a thing I say, which is the point. An export that depends on goodwill is not really yours.

The migration, if you want it

If you would rather not stand the site up yourself, I will move it onto your new host and configure it there. That is a flat $199 for a standard WordPress destination. An unusual destination gets quoted separately, and I will tell you it is unusual before you agree to anything, not after.

This is the one part of leaving that costs money, and it is a price for work performed because you asked for it. You do not have to buy it. The free export covers you completely without it. You may not need this step at all, and that is a perfectly good outcome.

If you are coming the other direction, moving an existing site onto my hosting, that is the migration service and it works the same way in reverse.

The backups, and one thing they are not

While your site is on my hosting, backups come with it: a daily copy, kept for 30 days. They are part of the hosting, not part of a care plan, so you are never paying for the same backups twice.

Here is the part I would rather say plainly than let you assume. Those backups live inside my hosting account. When the site is removed at the end of the 30 days, the backups go with it. They are not an archive you can reach back into six months after leaving. If you want history, take it with you in the export while the site is still up. I would rather tell you that in advance than in an apology.

Two things people assume that are not true here

There is no per-client hosting plan running somewhere with your name on it. Your subscription is to me, not to a host, so there is no separate hosting term ticking away that you are locked into or that has to be seen out. That is why cancelling can be a single decision rather than a process.

Nothing about leaving touches what you own. Your files, your database, your content and your code are yours from final payment, and the domain has been registered in your name the whole time on either hosting path. Leaving my hosting moves where the site sits. It does not move anything about who owns it.

Why this is a post and not a paragraph on a pricing page

Because exit terms are only worth anything if you can read them before you need them.

If you are still deciding, the case for letting me host it, and everything you get in writing, is in why I host my clients’ sites. If you want the plans and what is on them, that is the hosting page.

And if you are already with me and reading this because you are thinking about leaving, that is fine. It is all above. You do not need to ask me for any of it.

Deciding what’s right for your site

If you’re weighing hosting options, whether that means staying, moving to me, or moving somewhere else, I’ll walk through what actually fits your site. Book a free 30-minute call, or see the hosting plans and pricing.