Firing Your Web Company: A Step-by-Step Exit Plan That Won’t Break Your Site

You’ve decided. The web company isn’t working out, and it’s time to move on. Maybe it’s slow responses, maybe it’s cost, maybe your business has simply outgrown what they offer. Whatever the reason, the worst thing you can do is fire them first and figure out the rest later.

Your website, your email and your domain are often tangled together. Pull the wrong thread and your site goes down, or your inbox stops receiving mail in the middle of the season. This plan keeps that from happening.

Step 1: Make a quiet inventory

Before you say anything, write down every piece of your online presence and who controls it. Our guide to who really owns your website walks through each piece in detail. Your list should include:

• Domain registrar and who the registrant is
• Hosting provider and whose account it’s in
• Where your business email is hosted
• Website admin logins
• Google Analytics, Search Console and Business Profile
• Any forms, booking tools, payment processors or plugins with paid licenses
• Social media and ad accounts

Mark anything you can’t log in to yourself. Those are the items to secure first.

Pick your timing

On the Grand Strand, timing matters. If most of your revenue comes in summer, don’t plan a switch for June. Late fall and winter give you room to test, fix surprises and get comfortable with the new setup before the phones get busy again.

Step 2: Read your contract

Look for three things: the notice period for cancelling, any terms about who owns the design and code, and any fees for handing over files. If the language is unclear or there’s real money at stake, a short consult with an attorney is worth it.

Step 3: Secure the domain first

The domain is the most important asset you have online. If you control it, you can always rebuild. If you don’t, everything else is at risk.

1. Confirm your business is the registrant. If it isn’t, ask for that to be changed.
2. Make sure the registrant email is one you control.
3. Turn on auto-renew and update the payment card.

Hold off on moving the domain to a new registrar until the end of the process. ICANN’s rules allow a registrar to deny a transfer within 60 days of a domain’s initial registration or a prior transfer, and changing the registrant can trigger its own 60-day lock. Securing ownership is urgent. Moving registrars usually isn’t.

Step 4: Get your own logins and backups

Ask, politely and in writing, for:

• Administrator access to your website
• Owner access to your Google accounts
• A full backup of the site: files and database
• Any design source files your contract entitles you to
• A list of paid plugins, themes, fonts or stock images and who holds those licenses

Keep the tone friendly. You may not have announced you’re leaving yet, and a cooperative handoff is far easier than a tense one. Most web companies handle this professionally.

Step 5: Line up your new team before you give notice

Have your next developer review the backup and confirm they can actually work with it. Some sites built on proprietary systems can’t be moved as-is and will need a rebuild. Better to know that now than after your old host shuts the account off.

If you’re still choosing, our list of web designer red flags can help you avoid landing in the same spot twice.

Step 6: Protect your email

This is the step people forget. If your email runs through the same hosting account as your website, moving the site can break your email. Find out exactly where your mail lives. If it needs to move too, schedule it for a slow week, not the Fourth of July.

Step 7: Build or move the site, then test

Your new developer sets up the site in its new home. Before switching anything live, test it:

• Every page loads, including on a phone
• Contact forms send to the right inbox
• Booking, checkout or payment features work end to end
• Analytics tracking is in place
• Old page addresses redirect to the new ones, so you keep search traffic and don’t strand old links

Step 8: Switch over, then give notice

Once the new site is ready, your developer points your domain’s DNS to the new host. After you’ve confirmed the site and email work, send your formal cancellation to the old company. Keep it short and professional. You may need something from them later.

Step 9: Transfer the domain if you want to

If your domain sits at a registrar you don’t want to keep, now’s the time to move it. Request the transfer code from your registrar. ICANN says the registrar must provide it within five calendar days of your request, and many let you generate it yourself. If the domain is in a locked status, the registrar has to give you a reasonable way to remove the lock.

Step 10: Clean up

• Remove the old company’s access from your Google accounts and site admin
• Change any passwords they knew
• Cancel subscriptions billed to you that you no longer need
• Store every login somewhere safe that doesn’t depend on one person

If the old company won’t cooperate

Most handoffs are uneventful. If yours isn’t, stay calm and keep everything in writing. If you’re the registrant and a registrar improperly refuses a transfer, ICANN has a Transfer Complaint process. For disputes over contracts or code ownership, talk to an attorney.

And if you can’t get the files at all, remember that the domain is what matters most. With the domain in hand, a new site can be built and launched.

Let us handle the hard parts

Axiom Design Group helps Grand Strand businesses from North Myrtle Beach to Murrells Inlet switch providers with a plan, not a scramble. We’ll take inventory with you, coordinate the handoff and launch your site on a setup you control. Learn about our web development services, or contact us and call (843) 839-4113 to talk it through.