If you are looking to migrate away from Wp Engine and the migration plugins you tried are not working completely. We have the solution for you. The old school way. Manually downloading the site’s files and database and uploading it to another host! For most hosts the steps are standard but with WP Engine, there are a few nuances that need to be considered before completely migrating to another host.

See below a full step by step instructions on how to migrate from WP engine to another host

• login into your WP Engine dashboard
• Select the site you want to migrate from the list of your sites
  
• Navigate to Manage > Backup from the side menu
  
• Click create backup
• Once created, click on the dots at the end of your backup’s line and click “Prepare Zip”
  
• Once the compressed backup is ready, click Download ZIP
  
• Decompress the zip archive, navigate to the wp-content directory and delete the following files:
  • advanced-cache.php
  • object-cache.php
• 
  
• * Check the content of the drop-ins folder and delete it if it’s empty.
• From there navigate to “mu-plugins” and remove all the files in the directory.
  Then, back at the root of the decompressed archive, open wp-config with your favorite text editor.
  Replace the values of ‘XXXXX’ in the lines containing:

  • define( 'DB_NAME', 'xxxxx' );

  • define( 'DB_USER', xxxxx );

  • define( 'DB_PASSWORD', ''xxxxx'' );

  • define( 'DB_HOST', ''xxxxx'' );

• With the values of your new hosting provider’s database credentials.
• Also, delete the line containing “DB_HOST_SLAVE” if it exists.
• Then, WPEngine adds a lot of settings to that file to either leverage their own systems or deactivate default WordPress features. Unfortunately, some of the plugins of your WordPress sites may also add settings to that file.
  • Below is the list of values that are dedicated to WPEngine and can be deleted safely from the file:

  • define( 'PWP_NAME', xxxxx );

  • define( 'WPE_APIKEY', ‘xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’ );

  • define( 'WPE_CLUSTER_ID', xxxxxx );

  • define( 'WPE_CLUSTER_TYPE', ‘xxx’ );

  • define( 'WPE_ISP', true );

  • define( 'WPE_BPOD', false );

  • define( 'WPE_RO_FILESYSTEM', false );

  • define( 'WPE_LARGEFS_BUCKET', 'xxxxx' );

  • define( 'WPE_SFTP_PORT', 2222 );

  • define( 'WPE_SFTP_ENDPOINT', 'xxxx' );

  • define( 'WPE_LBMASTER_IP', '' );

  • define( 'WPE_CDN_DISABLE_ALLOWED', true );

  • define( 'WPE_FORCE_SSL_LOGIN', false );

  • /*SSLSTART*/ if ( isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_WPE_SSL']) && $_SERVER['HTTP_X_WPE_SSL'] ) $_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on'; /*SSLEND*/

  • define( 'WPE_EXTERNAL_URL', false );

  • define( 'WPE_WHITELABEL', 'wpengine' );

  • define( 'WPE_BETA_TESTER', false );

  • umask(0002);

  • $wpe_cdn_uris=array ( );

  • $wpe_no_cdn_uris=array ( );

  • $wpe_content_regexs=array ( );

  • $wpe_all_domains=array ( 0 => 'xxxxxxx', 1 => 'xxxxx', );

  • $wpe_varnish_servers=array ( 0 => '127.0.0.1', );

  • $wpe_special_ips=array ( 0 => 'xxxxxxx', 1 => 'xxxxxxxxx', );

  • $wpe_netdna_domains=array ( );

  • $wpe_netdna_domains_secure=array ( );

  • $wpe_netdna_push_domains=array ( );

  • $wpe_domain_mappings=array ( );

  • $memcached_servers=array ( 'default' =>  array ( 0 => 'xxxxxxx' ), );

Upload your database to your new hosting provider.

The backup you downloaded should contain a backup of your database under wp-content/mysql.sql

Upload the files to your new hosting provider using a FTP client of your choice

That should do it! If you are still having issues with your migration and are interested in professional help please contact us.