Process
How to hand over a website to its owner
Transfer every account into the owner’s name, hand over credentials in writing, confirm the intellectual property assignment, and provide documentation covering how to publish, how to roll back, and where everything lives. Handover is a deliverable, not a conversation.
Before you start
- Every account and credential used by the project
- The signed agreement
The steps
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Step 1: Transfer the domain
Registered to the client, in their registrar account, with them as registrant contact.
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Step 2: Transfer hosting and DNS
Their account, their billing details, with you added as a user if you are staying on.
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Step 3: Transfer the payment account
In their business name with their bank details. This is the most serious one to get wrong.
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Step 4: Hand over source and credentials
A repository they own, and every credential documented in writing rather than promised.
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Step 5: Confirm the IP assignment
In writing, referencing the agreement. Do not leave it implied.
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Step 6: Write the operating documentation
How to publish, how to roll back, who to contact for what, and where each service lives.
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Step 7: Walk through it once
A recorded session, so it can be rewatched in six months when it is actually needed.
The document worth more than the training
A written record of where everything lives and how to change it. The session is forgotten within weeks; the document is what someone reads at the moment they need it, which is usually months later and under pressure.
Why a good supplier hands over willingly
Retaining accounts to make leaving difficult is a business model, not a service. A supplier confident in the work has no need for it, and a client who knows they can leave is considerably more likely to stay.
The background behind this
Who actually owns your website — a checklist you can verify today covers the reasoning in about 3 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Pakistan. These procedures are the ones I run on client work, written down rather than invented — including the ones where the honest answer is that the fix is not available on your current hosting.