QuickBooks Hosting Migration: Important Things To Know Before You Switch to a New Provider

Published January 24, 2023
quickbooks hosting provider for small businesses

When operating a business, every decision you make impacts your enterprise in one way or the other. Therefore, it’s important to make decisions that are backed up with detailed analysis, careful planning, and unwavering focus on the expected outcome. From selecting the right people to hire for your business to choosing a location for your premises, everything is structured and well-planned, which is why you’re able to get the desired outcome. The same applies to QuickBooks Cloud Hosting migration. Now, changing from one QuickBooks hosting service provider to another is far from a simple, overnight process. It’s a multi-faceted procedure, and successful migration involves detailed analysis, meticulous planning, flawless implementation, and thorough testing.

Businesses looking to migrate to a new hosting service for the first time have to take a variety of factors into consideration – from risk to benefits, from the existing legacy platform to a new cloud-based solution, and understand how to get the best from the features your new provider offers. Over the course of this blog post, we’ll take a look at some critical factors you should take into account while migrating your QuickBooks applications and data to a new hosting service provider.

What is QuickBooks Hosting Migration?

The term ‘QuickBooks Hosting Migration’ refers to transferring your QuickBooks applications and data from your existing cloud hosting service provider’s platform to another one’s. The migration process is generally comprised of 5 phases. They are:

  1. Evaluating the existing service
  2. Finding a new provider
  3. Evaluating the new provider
  4. Migrating your QuickBooks data
  5. Implementation

Let’s take a look at each individual phase in detail.

Evaluating the existing service

Before you migrate to a new service, you first need to determine if you really need to migrate to a new service. To perform a detailed analysis of your existing cloud-hosted QuickBooks platform. Do you have a case that justifies migrating to a new service?

Finding a new provider

If you can identify issues with your current hosting service, such as poor performance, lackluster security, and/or costs, it’s time to start looking for a new cloud hosting provider.

Evaluating the new provider

There are parameters you should use to evaluate a new provider, including performance, security cost, support, and understanding of your enterprise and industry. We’ll discuss this in further detail later in the post.

Data migration

Once you’ve made a final decision on a new service provider, you can begin shifting your QuickBooks apps and data to the new platform.

Implementation

After the data migration process is complete, you start learning how to get the best out of the new platform.

Benefits of Migration

While most hosting issues can be resolved by coordinating with your service provider, there are some red flags that indicate you’d do better by just switching to a new hosting solution. These include substandard performance, hidden and constantly increasing costs, security problems, and SLAs not being delivered.

Below are the typical positives you can expect after you move your QuickBooks to a new service:

  • A reputable hosting provider will offer you a flexible pricing structure which will help slash your operational costs.
  • Migrating to a new platform can offer better security and improved accessibility and control of your QuickBooks applications and data.
  • Switching to a good hosting provider allows for better business continuity and can provide robust disaster recovery and data backup options. A good hosting provider will ensure that there are no disruptions with your QuickBooks and that they’re always running smoothly.
  • If the issue with your existing platform is lackluster performance and accessibility issues, switching to a new provider can help you get a predefined guarantee of uptime and lightning-quick access to your QuickBooks applications and data.
  • 24/7 customer support from your hosting provider is crucial to your business’s continuity. If you’ve been experiencing poor support, don’t hesitate to a customer-friendly hosting provider that can guarantee tech support 24/7, 365 days a year.

Things To Consider When Evaluating a New Provider

Switching to a new hosting provider is only beneficial if you switch to the right hosting provider. Here are some critical questions you should ask potential QuickBooks hosts.

  • Have you ever provided QuickBooks hosting services to an enterprise similar to mine? Are you authorized by Intuit?
  • Is your hosting solution scalable enough to meet my changing business needs? Will I be able to change plans if the number of my users and applications increases?
  • Who’ll be able to access my QuickBooks data?
  • How secure will my QuickBooks data and applications be on your cloud platform?
  • Can you offer a flexible payment plan? What special offers do I get?
  • Will my data be recovered if I lose it?
  • What’s the geographical location of your servers?
  • Do you provide service uptime guarantees?
  • What level of customer support do you offer? How exactly will you help me out in case I face technical issues or other difficulties?
  • What’re your disaster recovery and data backup protocols?

Devise a Migration Strategy

The process of transferring to a new provider’s cloud-based platform can be plagued with the usual IT issues, such as data integrity, interoperability, and the portability of QuickBooks apps and data. However, such obstacles can be overcome if businesses plan in advance and take a structured approach to migration. While good cloud hosting providers will do everything to make migration as seamless and simple as possible, it could be a complicated process. Your new provider’s cloud environment can be very different from your current one. Let’s take a look at some of the vital factors that should be taken into account during the migration process.

Data and application portability

The smoothness of the migration process depends to a certain extent upon the interoperability and portability of your QuickBooks applications and data, which is to be moved to the new cloud platform. Portability essentially means the accessibility of your apps and data across different cloud environments. Interoperability, meanwhile, refers to your QuickBooks application’s ability to support and integrate with the cloud and other add-ons and applications. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that your QuickBooks apps and data are portable and can be integrated with the applications offered by the new environment.

Customer support

As we’ve already mentioned, solid customer support is perhaps the most important thing you want from a cloud hosting provider. As cloud computing is an easy-to-use, “self-service” type of technology, you won’t require assistance with most of its functionalities. However, there will still be potential scenarios where you’ll require instant support from your hosting provider. You’ll require assistance before, during and after the QuickBooks migration process. This would involve things like incorporating QuickBooks with other apps, setting up new user permissions, enabling printer accessibility for QuickBooks, etc. For all these things, you’ll require 24/7 support from your hosting provider.

Service uptime

To put it in a nutshell, service uptime is simply a measure of how quickly a cloud-hosted QuickBooks application becomes accessible to you. The availability of cloud service is generally conveyed as a percentage of a given year’s uptime.

Costs

While migrating to a new hosting solution translates into additional costs, it’s not really a turn-off for businesses, considering the overall positive impact it has. However, you should make sure that you get all the details of the costs involved from your provider – Do they offer a flexible pricing structure that suits your workload? Do they provide any special offers? Will they charge you for QuickBooks Hosting migration? Most hosting providers and independent QuickBooks consultants charge a fee for migration services. However, at gotomyerp, we do this for free for our new clients. We don’t charge to set them up on our platform, and we are the only ones that provide this service absolutely free of charge.

Security

As we’ve already mentioned, solid security is another vital criterion your new hosting provider needs to fulfill. Loss of data and breach of privacy are two of the major concerns that should be taken into account while moving your QuickBooks data. Ask your hosting provider what kind of security measures they have in place for the protection of your valuable business data. Also, ensure that they have robust disaster recovery protocols in place so you can retrieve and restore your data in case you lose it.

Why Choose gotomyerp’s QuickBooks Hosting Migration Service

At gotomyerp, we carefully analyze the needs and requirements of your enterprise before we offer a hosting solution that is tailored to suit your QuickBooks apps and data. By having a firm understanding of your enterprise’s dynamics, gotomyerp’s cloud migration experts can help you achieve the highest return on your investment.

Being an Intuit-authorized QuickBooks hosting provider, gotomyerp promises unparalleled security, constant support, and exemplary service uptime. Get in touch with us if you’re seeking top-notch QuickBooks hosting migration or implementation services.