# Leaving IONOS (1&1): migration without the drama Source: https://dijihost.co.uk/guides/leaving-ionos/ Updated: 2026-10-18 > To leave IONOS without drama, find out who holds your DNS, copy every record in the zone, build and test the site on the new server, move the mail separately, and cancel only once the new setup has run for a fortnight. dijihost does the move for you with Complete Hosting at £1 a day + VAT. ## Key facts - IONOS was called 1&1 for years, and many UK accounts were opened under the old name. - The company holding your DNS controls where your website and email go, and it may not be your host. - Copy every DNS record before changing any: A, MX, SPF, DKIM, CNAMEs and verification records. - IONOS sells products as contracts with their own terms, so check each one before cancelling. - Their shared hosting uses their own control panel rather than cPanel or Plesk. - Scheduled tasks, redirects and PHP settings made in a control panel are not in a file copy. - dijihost Complete Hosting is £1 a day + VAT, with migration included. ## Find out where your DNS actually lives Most of the drama in **leaving IONOS** comes from one question nobody asks until it is too late: who is holding your DNS? Answer it on day one and the rest is ordinary work. Answer it on the day you switch and you get an afternoon of everybody asking why the site has gone. DNS is the phone book that turns your domain into addresses for the website, the mail server and anything else hanging off it. Whoever holds it controls all of it, and that is not automatically whoever you pay for hosting. If the domain was bought at IONOS, it is probably on their nameservers. But we have opened plenty of accounts where the nameservers point at Cloudflare, an agency's account, or a host the business stopped paying years ago. Check rather than assume. On Windows, **nslookup -type=ns yourbusiness.co.uk** tells you in one line, and our guide to [checking where your website is really hosted](https://dijihost.co.uk/guides/where-is-my-website-hosted/) explains what comes back. If DNS itself is new to you, our sister site has a plain guide to [what DNS is](https://dijituldns.co.uk/guides/what-is-dns/). Then photograph the zone. Screenshot every page or export it: A records, MX records, SPF and DKIM lines, CNAMEs pointing at a booking system or payment provider, and the stray verification record somebody added for Google years ago. Anything you do not copy stops working later, and whoever added it will not remember. If the account was opened as 1&1 by somebody who has since left, budget an hour just for getting back into it before you plan anything else. ## The account is a stack of contracts IONOS sells its products as contracts with terms and dates rather than as a single rolling bill. That is a legitimate way to do business, and it is also why "I cancelled it" and "it stopped charging me" can turn out to be different statements. Before anything technical, read what you are signed up to. Which contract each domain sits under. Which one includes the mailboxes, because bundled mailboxes are the ones people forget until they stop. When each term ends, and what the panel says about how and when to cancel. We are not going to quote notice periods, because they vary by product and by when you signed, and a made-up number in a blog post is how people miss deadlines. If it is unclear, ask them in writing and keep the reply. One rule regardless: do not cancel anything before the new setup is live and settled. The old service costing you one more month is the cheapest safety net in the whole job. ## Their control panel is their own On IONOS shared hosting the control panel is their own design rather than cPanel or Plesk, so generic guides written for other hosts will not match your screen. Nothing sinister in that, but it means two practical things. - **Check your downloads.** Backups and file archives come out in whatever shape their tools produce. Open the archive and look inside the SQL file. An export that failed halfway looks exactly like a good one from the outside. - **Walk the panel with a notepad.** Scheduled tasks, redirects, IP restrictions and a PHP setting somebody raised to allow a large upload all live at panel level, not in your files. Write down anything changed from its default. ## The website is usually the easy half Once you can see the zone and reach the files, moving the site is routine. Files across, database across, rebuild it on the new server, check it properly while the old one still serves the public, then change the record so the domain points at the new machine. Our guide to [moving a website without downtime](https://dijihost.co.uk/guides/move-website-without-downtime/) covers the switch. Two things to look at while you are in there. Note the exact PHP version, since older sites are often pinned to something the wider world has moved past; we run PHP 5.6 to 8.5, selectable per site. And find out how the site sends mail. A contact form that has relied on the server's own mail service for years can go silent on a server built differently, with no error and no email. ## Mailboxes and the domain If your mail lives at IONOS, treat it as its own project with its own date. Create the mailboxes on the new side, copy the messages across with folders intact, and only then change the MX records. Aliases and forwarders are configuration, not content, so rebuild them by hand. Then test from outside: send a message in from your phone on mobile data, reply, and check the reply does not land in junk. That catches SPF and DKIM records copied wrong, the usual reason mail starts going to spam a week after a move. Our sister site covers [SPF, DKIM and DMARC](https://dijituldns.co.uk/guides/spf-dkim-dmarc-setup/) and [emails going to spam](https://dijituldns.co.uk/guides/emails-going-to-spam/). A domain transfer and a DNS change are different things, and you can do either without the other. Repointing DNS moves where your services run; transferring moves who bills you for the name. Make sure the domain's contact address is a mailbox you can still read, and check the expiry date before you start. The steps are in [transferring a .co.uk domain](https://dijituldns.co.uk/guides/transfer-co-uk-domain/) and [pointing a domain at a new host](https://dijituldns.co.uk/guides/point-domain-to-new-host/). ## Being fair about it, and letting us do it IONOS is a large European provider, and for a simple site that rarely changes it does the job at a price that is hard to argue with. What sends people looking is scale rather than misconduct: at the volume end of the market you buy a standard product, the introductory and renewal prices are rarely the same, and that holds right up until the morning your shop is down and you want somebody who already knows how it is put together. Give us the login and the domain and we will map the account, copy the zone, build the site on our servers, move the mail and give you a day's notice before anything is switched. Your IONOS account carries on untouched while we work. Whole servers have been moved into this business and several merged into one, so an account carrying overlapping contracts is familiar ground. [dijihost Complete Hosting](https://dijihost.co.uk/complete-hosting/) is **£1 a day + VAT** with [migration](https://dijihost.co.uk/website-migration/) included (moving more than 5 email accounts may be charged). [Order online](https://clients.dijitul.uk/order) or ring 01623 650333 and talk it through. ## FAQs ### Can I move my website away from IONOS but keep my domain there? Yes. Registration and hosting are separate purchases, so the name can stay with IONOS while the site runs on somebody else's server. All that changes is the DNS. Plenty of businesses sit like that for years, though we tend to consolidate eventually so there is one account to get into when something urgent comes up. ### Do I have to cancel my IONOS contract before I move? No, and you should not. Move first, run on the new setup for a couple of weeks, then cancel. IONOS products are sold as contracts with their own terms and dates, so check what your account says about cancelling and follow it exactly. Keeping the old service a little longer is cheap insurance. ### How do I find out who controls my DNS? Check your domain's nameservers, through a public whois lookup or with nslookup -type=ns yourdomain.co.uk on your own computer. The names that come back identify whoever holds the records deciding where your website and email go. That is often not the company you pay for hosting, and it is the account you need first. ### Why has my contact form stopped sending after leaving IONOS? Usually because the site was handing its mail to the old server's own mail service, and the new server is set up differently. It fails quietly, with no error on screen. The fix is to send the site's mail through a proper authenticated mailbox, with SPF and DKIM records set correctly for your domain. ### Can dijihost move my site off IONOS for me? Yes. dijihost maps the account, copies the DNS zone, builds the site on our UK servers, moves the mail and tells you before anything is switched. Your IONOS account stays untouched until the new setup has settled. Migration is included in Complete Hosting at £1 a day + VAT; moving more than 5 email accounts may be charged. ## Pricing and ordering dijihost Complete Hosting is £1 a day + VAT (£365 a year + VAT). Order at https://clients.dijitul.uk/order or call 01623 650333.