There are several measures youll want to take in preparation for switching from one cheap hosting provider to another. To start with, do not under any circumstances cancel your service with your current cheap hosting provider until youve completed the switch to your new one and made sure that your site is live on the new cheap hosting companys servers. If — heaven forbid — any problems arise in the transfer and youve already cancelled your current cheap hosting service, visitors to your site will find it temporarily down — and that is a humongous webmastering no-no.
Heres another dont to start off the transferring process for you: Dont do anything until youve backed up your entire website. This is probably the most important step in the process and one that is all too often embarrassingly overlooked. Backup every last page, every graphic, every hotlink. If youve never performed a backup of your site before, its easy to do — just use your favorite FTP program (any will do) and download all the files from your current cheap hosting company.
Once youve got this critical step taken care of, its time to start hunting...