What you should control when your website launches

Know where the domain is registered

Record the domain registrar, renewal date, account owner and recovery contact. Use a business-controlled account and a recovery address that will remain available if the website goes offline. Turn on multi-factor authentication where it is offered.

Your provider may manage the technical records, but you should know how to regain access and who approves changes. Record who pays the renewal and how you will be notified before it expires.

Separate ownership from access

An administrator login is not the same thing as ownership of every design, image or software component. The agreement should explain what transfers to you, what is licensed and what depends on an ongoing subscription.

Ask about source files, custom code, fonts, stock images, plugins and third-party services. For each, record whether it can move to another provider and whether additional payments are required. These are questions to settle in the project agreement, not assumptions to make at launch.

Keep an account register

• Domain registrar and DNS: account owner, renewal and recovery contact.
• Hosting or website platform: billing owner, administrators and cancellation process.
• Content management system: your login, editor permissions and training notes.
• Analytics and search tools: business access and provider access listed separately.
• Forms, booking and email connections: destination inbox, responsible person and failure alerts.
• Assets and backups: file location, export format, restore process and any licence limits.

Use your password manager to share credentials securely when individual invitations are unavailable. Do not put passwords in a general project document. Remove access that is no longer needed after the project ends.

Try the handover yourself

Before the project closes, log in using your own account. Update a harmless piece of content, submit a test enquiry and find the backup or export instructions. Ask your provider to demonstrate a restore process appropriate to the platform.

Save a short handover note with the launch date, support contact, response expectations and the cost of future changes. Assign someone in the business to review renewals and account access periodically.

Ask one final question

‘If we needed to change providers next month, what would we receive and what would need to be rebuilt?’ A clear answer makes the trade-offs visible. Some hosted services cannot be moved as a complete working site, but their content may be exportable. Decide whether that fits the way you want to run the business.