What Is Lift And Shift? Is It Right For You?

Cloud migration strategies range from quick rehosting to complete application refactoring. Lift and shift migration (also called rehosting) moves applications from on-premises to the cloud with minimal changes, promising speed and lower initial costs compared to other strategies.

But does lift and shift actually deliver long-term savings? This guide examines when lift and shift makes sense, when it creates hidden costs, and what alternatives exist.

We’ll also take a deeper look at what lift and shift is, when you might use the migration strategy, and other strategies you may want to consider.

What Is Lift And Shift In Cloud Computing?

Lift and shift migration moves applications from on-premises or local data centers to cloud infrastructure with minimal or no modification. The application’s code, architecture, and configuration remain unchanged — only the underlying infrastructure changes.

This approach is also called rehosting or forklift migration. Unlike cloud-native migrations that refactor applications for cloud services, lift and shift treats the application as a black box that simply runs on different hardware.

What Are The Benefits Of Lift And Shift Cloud Migration Strategy?

Rehosting is ideal for several reasons, including:

What Are The Drawbacks Of A Lift And Shift Cloud Migration?

Lift and shift has a couple of limitations that may include:

How do you lift and shift an application to the cloud?

The approach does not include decoupling an application from its operating system. A lifted and shifted application is not a cloud-native application. Lift and shift means you copy your application from on-premises architecture and “paste” it into a cloud platform.

It is mostly a matter of matching your existing application’s compute, networking, and storage requirements to the cloud platform’s resources. It is even easier to implement when the application is already virtualized (using virtual machines).

Lift And Shift Migration Examples

There are several companies that have used lift and shift to move to the cloud. One common practice is to rehost in the beginning and then improve their systems from that point forward.

1. Netflix

Its meteoric rise was triggered by an incident in 2008 when a data center corruption made purchasing DVDs impossible for three days.

Netflix knew that retaining its monolithic architecture would hinder its growth and lead to more downtime. This prompted it to digitize its workflows to become more flexible and resilient.

The Netflix architecture on AWS has since improved to support cloud-native features such as autoscaling and microservices.

2. GE Oil and Gas

GE Oil & Gas planned to migrate 500 applications from its pipeline inspection machinery to AWS by the end of 2016.

The company also wanted to eliminate legacy business processes immediately to reduce IT costs. However, it had to migrate all 750 terabytes of data at an incredible speed. By the end of the year, the company achieved these goals, including a 52% cost savings.

3. Dow Jones

Dow Jones, which is one of the world’s largest news-gathering companies, had only two months to relocate from a local data center in 2014.

At the time, CIO Stephen Orban favored refactoring to migrate the company’s workflows.

But time was not on his side. So they rehosted most of their data center resources on AWS within two months and saved $40,000 in the process.

Dow Jones then used re-platforming to help optimize its workflows in a cloud environment.

4. News Corp

News Corp owns Dow Jones. Dow Jones’ lift-and-shift move impressed its parent company with its cost savings and rapid transformation. The company set a larger goal: migrating 75% of all applications to the cloud and saving $100 million.

The company reduced the number of data centers from 56 to just six after the migration.

These examples highlight some excellent lift-and-shift use cases. But let’s take a look at a few more.

When Should You Lift And Shift?

Here are a few scenarios where you may realize the advantages of a lift and shift migration strategy.

You need to migrate fast

When time is limited, lift and shift helps you move fast. As seen with Netflix and Dow Jones, teams used lift and shift to reduce risk or exit data centers under tight deadlines.

The application and data move with minimal changes. Some host reconfiguration is still required, but effort is lower than other strategies.

You’re making the first cloud move

Lift and shift can be a starting point for cloud adoption. Like GE Oil and Gas, teams can rehost workloads with limited disruption.

Once teams are comfortable in the new environment, they can introduce changes. This opens the door to scalability, backups, pay-per-use pricing, and reduced operations work.

You want to shift CapEx to OpEx

Rehosting replaces upfront hardware spend with usage-based pricing. Instead of buying and maintaining servers, you pay only for cloud resources used.

This is often more practical than refreshing aging on-premises infrastructure.

Read more: CapEx Vs. OpEx In The Cloud: 10 Key Differences

You can’t easily refactor the application

Some third-party or legacy applications are hard to change. When refactoring is risky or not possible, lift and shift preserves the application and its workflows.

You can still revisit architecture changes later, when conditions allow.

You need short-term cost relief

Lift and shift can reduce costs in the short term by:

Important: this is not guaranteed long-term savings. Over time, rehosted applications often cost more to run. Without optimization, overprovisioning can raise cloud costs by 15%.

Since lifted and shifted workloads are not cloud-optimized, overprovisioning compute resources can be a costly and recurring challenge.

That can erode the cost savings you’d hoped for.

“A proliferation of hidden costs during the lift and shift project can happen,” Bill Buckley, VP of Engineering at CloudZero, seconds the findings.

“Everyone always thinks of getting the core code running and figures, ‘we can just re-package it for the new environment.’ But you often forget about the multitude of supporting projects to build, test, debug, etc.

Those concerns often cannot be fully lifted and shifted, and thus need some serious work, and companies sometimes start it too late, so the overall lift and shift of the core code slows down tremendously,” Bill confirms.

This begs the question.

Is Lift And Shift Actually A Good Cloud Migration Strategy?

Lift and shift can be helpful in specific situations. Over time, however, it often creates new technical and cost challenges. Below are the most common issues teams encounter, based on real-world experience shared by Bill Buckley, VP of Engineering at CloudZero.

1. Fragile resultant architecture

Most applications are “battle-tested” in their original environment. When moved as-is to the cloud, new failure patterns emerge.

These failures can:

Lift and shift often exposes weaknesses that were previously hidden.

2. Observability issues

Delivering reliable service at scale depends on mature observability practices. Those practices are usually built over years on a specific stack.

After lift and shift:

This lack of visibility increases the risk of outages, security gaps, and unexpected cost spikes.

Cost volatility is a frequent side effect. Without early detection, overruns can escalate quickly.

3. Rollbacks

Lift and shift often migrates:

These problems can force teams to roll workloads back to on-premises environments.

In a large 2020 survey of IT decision-makers:

Repatriation is costly and disruptive.

You do not want to be a part of this group.

“Calculating COGs for new products before they are built is very hard, but when building a new product, you can at least learn as you layer on features. You can’t do that as easily when doing a lift and shift, so I would be very conservative and figure out how to, early on, add-in project planning and tooling to see if your estimates are being met so that you don’t end up in a place where the sunk cost fallacy is pushing you to do non-ideal things later in the project.”

Bill Buckley, VP of Engineering

CloudZero

So, what are the alternatives to lift and shift?

Lift and Shift Vs. Transform and Shift: What Other Cloud Migration Strategies Exist?

Lift and shift is one cloud migration strategy, not the only one.

The three categories of cloud migrations are:

Lift and shift vs. SaaS

SaaS migrations replace existing systems with cloud-ready software.

Pros

Cons

SaaS works best when standard functionality is acceptable.

Lift and shift vs. PaaS

PaaS migrations involve modifying application code to use cloud-native services.

Pros

Cons

PaaS often delivers better results over time, but it is not a quick fix.

Bottom line;

The bottom line: lift and shift enables fast migration but rarely delivers long-term efficiency without follow-up optimization.

Be conservative about cost savings projections. Plan for cost visibility early and decide upfront whether lift and shift is a temporary bridge or permanent architecture.

What’s Next? Managing Costs After Lift and Shift

After lift and shift, cloud costs often rise unexpectedly. The challenge is not usage. It’s understanding which customers, teams, or features are driving spend in a new architecture.

CloudZero helps teams translate raw cloud spend into business context, such as cost per customer, feature, service, team, product, and more.

This early visibility helps engineering and finance teams spot cost trends, detect anomalies, and make informed decisions before overruns compound.

Cloud cost intelligence turns cloud spend into strategic insight. Drift reduced AWS costs by about $2.4M annually. Shutterstock exceeded its cost-avoidance targets through clearer allocation. Upstart cut $20M in cloud spend. PicPay saved $18.6M, and SonicWall increased engineering cost engagement by 6×. You can, too. to see how CloudZero can also help your organization achieve similar outcomes.

FAQs

Is lift and shift the same as rehosting?

Yes. Lift and shift and rehosting refer to the same migration approach, moving applications as-is from on-premises to the cloud.

Does lift and shift reduce cloud costs?

Lift and shift may reduce costs in the short term, especially when exiting a data center. Over time, costs often increase due to overprovisioning and a lack of cloud optimization.

Is lift and shift considered cloud-native?

No. Lifted and shifted applications do not use cloud-native features such as auto-scaling, managed services, or serverless architectures.

When does lift and shift make sense?

Lift and shift makes sense when:

When should lift and shift be avoided?

Lift and shift should be avoided when:

What are the main risks of lift and shift?

The main risks include:

Is lift and shift a long-term migration strategy?

Rarely. In most cases, lift and shift is a temporary step, followed by re-platforming or refactoring within 6–18 months.

How does lift and shift compare to PaaS migration?

Lift and shift prioritizes speed and minimal change. PaaS migration needs code changes, but delivers better scalability, performance, and long-term cost control.

How can teams control costs after lift and shift?

Teams need early cost visibility and monitoring to track resource usage, identify overprovisioning, and detect cost anomalies before they escalate.

Is lift and shift still relevant in 2026?

Yes, but for speed, compliance, or urgency, not as a final architecture. Most organizations now treat lift and shift as a bridge, not a destination.