A hosting handover should leave the business able to understand who owns each service, who can access it and how the website can be recovered. The checklist matters most before an urgent change is needed.
01Confirm ownership#
Record the legal owner and administrative contact for the domain, hosting account, DNS provider and any delivery service. Shared documentation should describe the process without exposing passwords.
02Transfer access safely#
- Use named accounts where the provider supports them.
- Require multi-factor authentication for administrative access.
- Store recovery details in an approved password manager.
- Remove accounts that no longer need access.
03Document the live environment#
Note the production directory, runtime version, database name, scheduled tasks and external services. Include the public URL and a clear distinction between staging and production.
04Verify backups and recovery#
A backup is useful only when its location, retention and restore process are known. Confirm that both files and the database are covered, then record who is responsible for a recovery decision.
05Finish with monitoring#
Document certificate renewal, availability checks, error logging and the contact route for incidents. The handover is complete when the new owner can operate the service without relying on undocumented knowledge.