Switching
web designers.

You probably own more than you think

The most common reason people stay with a web person they have outgrown is a vague fear that leaving will break something or that they will lose the site entirely. Usually neither is true, but it depends on four things, and it is worth knowing which of them are in your name before you start any conversation.

• Your domain. The single most important one. If the registration is in your name, you hold all the cards, because everything else can be rebuilt and pointed at it.
• Your hosting. Less important. Hosting is a commodity and moving is normal.
• Your content. Your words and photos are yours. Getting them out may be tedious but it is rarely blocked.
• Your email. Frequently tangled up with the website by whoever set it up, and the one thing you genuinely cannot afford to have go down.

Find out whose name the domain is in

Look up your domain on any WHOIS lookup, or check whether you have a login to a registrar like GoDaddy, Namecheap or Google Domains. If the registrant is you or your business, you are in a strong position and can move whenever you like.

If it is in your developer's name, that is not necessarily malice. Plenty of small shops register domains on a client's behalf and never think about it again. But get it transferred into your name before you do anything else, and do it while the relationship is still cordial.

Protect the email first

This is the step people skip and the one that actually hurts. Website hosting and email are separate services that often live under the same account. Move the website carelessly and the mail records can go with it, which means your business email stops working on a random Tuesday.

A competent new provider will change only the record that points your website, and leave your mail records untouched. Ask that question explicitly before anyone touches anything. If the answer is vague, that is your answer about them.

Keep the URLs that are working

If your site has been up for years, some pages are quietly bringing in customers. Rebuilding without mapping those addresses to their new equivalents is how businesses lose traffic in a redesign, and it gets blamed on "the new site" when the real cause was skipping a spreadsheet.

Any provider worth hiring will audit the existing URLs first and set up redirects. If nobody mentions redirects, they are going to cost you traffic. See what a redesign actually involves.

How to actually have the conversation

You do not owe anyone a justification for moving your business. A short, warm, factual message is enough: you are moving the site, you would like the domain transferred and any files or content exported, and you appreciate the work.

Do not start the new build before you have the domain. Do not tell them they are being replaced by someone cheaper. Keep it brief and pleasant, because the goodwill is worth more than being right about anything.

If the person is unreachable, which is common, the domain registrar's own recovery process is your route. It is slower and requires proving the business is yours, but it works.