Introducing the Easy Guide to Migrating Large Sites on Limited Hosting! Whether you’re facing upload size constraints or build interruptions, this step-by-step manual offers simple solutions. Learn how to navigate hosting limitations with Duplicator Lite and Pro, ensuring a smooth transition for your website. Say goodbye to migration headaches and hello to seamless site transfers!

Issues While Building a Backup

Some hosting providers might restrict you from creating a backup using Zip. Duplicator has a special format called DupArchive (daf) made for such hosts. To use it, follow these steps:

For Duplicator Lite: Go to Settings » Backups » Archive Engine and enable DupArchive:

Note: With Duplicator Lite, you can only create DupArchive backups up to 500MB.

For Duplicator Pro: Head to Settings » Backups » Archive and enable DupArchive under Archive Engine.

Two-Part Installation: If you’re using Duplicator Lite and face a “Build Interrupt” issue, try the Two-Part Installation method. Depending on your host’s performance and limitations, if your site is over 2GB on a budget host with Duplicator Pro, you might also need this method.

If your build is stalling at a specific percentage rather than failing outright, see Troubleshooting Backup Build Stuck at Specific %. For more on working with DupArchive/.daf files directly, see Extracting .daf file with DupArchive Extractor.

Upload Limitations

If your budget host has an upload size limit, you can work around it in a few ways:

• File Filters: Add large files to the file filter when creating a backup to fit within your host’s limit. Then, manually move these filtered files over via FTP. Usually, it’s easiest to filter your wp-content/uploads/ folder (usually containing images) and then move these files manually.
  
• Two-Part Installation: If you’re using Duplicator Lite and face a “Build Interrupt” issue, try the Two-Part Installation method. Duplicator Pro users generally shouldn’t need this, its built-in DupArchive format uses chunked processing that handles large sites without hitting the same build interruptions Lite can run into.

While it’s good for smaller sites, it runs on a single-threaded process. If your host stops the PHP process or times out prematurely, the migration might fail, especially on cheaper hosts. You can often adjust these settings if you have control over your VPS server.

For larger sites (1GB+), we recommend upgrading to Duplicator Pro as it processes data using multiple threads, making it more suitable for large migrations.