When to reach for it
Use it whenever a website changes hands: a designer finishes and steps back, the employee who ran the site leaves, you buy a business that came with a website, or you move to a new provider. It lists what the receiving side should hold in its own name before the other side walks away.
Launching a brand-new site instead? The launch checklist covers the decisions and checks for going live.
Website handover checklist
Tick an item once you have tested it yourself, for example by signing in, rather than when you were told it is done.
Working through a handover
Ask for each item in writing, then prove it yourself: sign in, download the backup, open the DNS screen, view the analytics user list. Tick an item only when you have seen it work, not when someone says it is taken care of.
Begin with Domain and DNS. Whoever controls the domain decides where the website and the mailboxes point, and almost everything else can be rebuilt if it has to be. When you are ready, "Copy what is left" turns the open items into one clear request to send to the previous provider.
Holding the trickiest items to a real test
Handover items look finished on paper long before they are. Hold each of these to a practical test.
- DNS records. You have a dated copy of every record, mail records included, made before anyone changed a setting. If a later change stops your mail arriving, that copy is how the old values get put back.
- Backups. You downloaded a complete backup yourself and know what it contains. A copy that only exists inside the old provider’s account is not one you can rely on once that account closes.
- Admin access. You signed in with your own account, confirmed it has full rights, and then went through the user list removing people who no longer need access.
- Email routing. You know which service receives mail for your domain, you have the admin sign-in for it, and a test message to each important mailbox arrived after the handover.
Where handovers usually go wrong
- Accepting a shared password in a text message instead of having your own account created.
- Editing DNS before saving the existing records, then discovering mail has stopped.
- Assuming the hosting bill belongs to you because the website does; check whose card is actually charged.
- Letting the old provider close their account before you hold a working copy of the site.
- Forgetting the form destination, so new enquiries keep landing in a former employee’s mailbox.
How it works
1. Consultation
We learn your services, customers and goals, in English or Spanish.
2. We write and design
We draft the words and build the site around your business.
3. 10 revision rounds
You review and request changes until it is right.
4. Launch and care
We launch, then Website Care keeps it hosted, backed up, checked weekly and A/B tested.
Keep going
Who owns your website · My web designer disappeared · Switch designers and keep your domain · Website launch checklist
