Website Handover: What Your Business Should Receive

Confirm account ownership

Check that the domain and essential service accounts are registered with details your business controls. Identify who can renew the domain, manage hosting and recover access. A personal account belonging to a former employee can create avoidable problems later.

Request access through the provider’s account or invitation system where possible. Store credentials in your business’s password manager and identify a responsible owner for each service.

Collect the agreed website materials

For a custom site, confirm what source files, design assets and deployment instructions are included in your agreement. For a managed platform, understand what can be exported and what remains within the platform.

Ask which images, fonts, themes or plugins carry licence conditions. Record renewals and any restrictions that affect how your business can use the materials.

Learn the tasks you will actually perform

A short demonstration should cover editing text, replacing an image and publishing a change if these tasks are available to your team. Ask for instructions that fit your site rather than a generic manual for the whole platform.

Practise an edit in a safe place during handover. This quickly reveals missing permissions or steps that seemed obvious to the developer but are unfamiliar to your team.

Review support and ongoing costs

List recurring charges, renewal dates and the person handling payment. Clarify what the support arrangement includes, how to report a problem, and how additional work is agreed. Distinguish correcting an issue in delivered work from requesting a new feature.

Complete the final checks together

Test contact routes, key links and important customer journeys. Confirm that someone can access backups or the recovery process. Keep a written list of remaining items with an owner for each. A clear handover record makes future maintenance and a later redesign easier to manage.