Moving a website to a new designer usually goes like this: you confirm what you own, you get access to the domain and anything else in your name, the new designer copies or rebuilds the site, the old addresses are redirected to the new ones, and the domain is pointed at the new site. Done carefully, customers barely notice. Done in a hurry, a business can lose its email for a day, its place in Google for months, or its domain altogether.
Most people reading this are not moving for fun. The designer has stopped answering emails, a small change has been waiting for weeks, or the invoices keep arriving while nothing gets done. That is stressful, and it tempts people to act fast. This guide is the slower version: what actually changes hands, what you could lose, and the order of work that keeps the risk low.
Table of Contents
What a Website Is Actually Made Of
Part of what makes a handover feel frightening is that "the website" sounds like one thing. It is several, and they are often held by different people. Separating them is the first useful step, because each one moves differently and some may already be safely yours.
| Part | What it is | Who often holds it |
|---|
| Domain name | Your address, such as yourbusiness.co.uk, rented year by year from a registrar | You, or the designer on your behalf |
| DNS settings | The signposts that tell the internet where your site and email live | Whoever controls the domain account, sometimes the host |
| Hosting | The server space where the site's files run | Often the designer, sometimes you |
| Site files and content | The pages, images, text and any database behind them | On the hosting, so whoever holds that |
| Email | Addresses ending in your domain | A separate provider, or bundled with the hosting |
| Google accounts | Search Console, Analytics, Google Business Profile | Ideally you, sometimes set up under the designer's login |
| Builder or platform account | Wix, Squarespace, a WordPress theme licence and so on | Whoever opened the account |
A handover is really a set of smaller handovers, one per row. Some will be a five-minute password change. One or two may take patience. Very rarely, one cannot be recovered and has to be replaced, which is annoying but survivable for everything except the domain.
First, Work Out What You Own
Before contacting anyone new, make a list. Search your email for receipts and renewal notices from registrars and hosting companies. Look for welcome emails from Google with your business name in the subject. Find any written agreement with the old designer. You are trying to answer one question for each part in the table above: is the account in my name, and can I sign in to it?
Write down what you find, even if the answer is "don't know". A list with gaps is far more use to a new designer than a vague sense that things are a mess. Who owns your website goes into the ownership questions in more detail, and is worth reading alongside this.
The domain comes first
Of everything on the list, the domain matters most. Pages can be rebuilt, images can be photographed again, and Google accounts can be reclaimed with some effort. A domain that lapses or stays under someone else's control is the one loss that can genuinely hurt: your email stops, links people have saved stop, and customers who type your address land nowhere.
To check who holds a .co.uk or .uk domain, a WHOIS lookup will usually show the registrar, though personal details are often hidden. If your own email receives the renewal notices, you are probably the registrant. If you have never seen a renewal notice, the designer likely registered it, possibly in their own name. That does not automatically mean they own it in any meaningful sense, but it does mean you need their cooperation, or the registrar's help, to move it.
Do this today: find out when the domain is due for renewal. If it is close and you cannot reach whoever holds it, that is the one deadline in this process that really matters.
Hosting, files and the site itself
Hosting is the next question. If the site runs on hosting you pay for directly, the files are within your reach. If the designer hosts it on their own server and bills you for it, the files sit on their account, and you will need a copy from them or the new designer will need to rebuild from what is publicly visible.
Builders such as Wix and Squarespace are a special case. A site made on those platforms generally cannot be lifted out and run elsewhere. If the account is in your name, you can add a new designer as a contributor and carry on. If you are moving away from the platform, the pages are rebuilt rather than moved, and the text and images are copied across. WordPress, Wix or Squarespace for trades explains how the platforms differ.
What You Risk Losing
It helps to name the risks plainly, because most of them are smaller than they feel and nearly all are avoidable with the right order of work.
- Email. The most common surprise. If your email runs through the old hosting, switching the domain to a new host can stop mail arriving until it is set up again. Find out where your email lives before anything moves.
- Google rankings. If page addresses change and nothing points the old ones at the new ones, Google sees pages vanish and the visits they earned can go with them. Redirects prevent most of this.
- Content. Text, photos and any blog posts. If you cannot get a copy, much can be recovered from the live site while it is still up, which is a good reason to save it now.
- Forms and enquiries. Contact forms often send to an address set up by the designer. After a move, test that enquiries reach you.
- History. Analytics and Search Console records. If those accounts were set up under the designer's login, you may need to verify ownership again and start fresh records, which costs you comparison data but not your rankings.
- Reviews. Google reviews belong to your Google Business Profile, not to the website, so a site move does not touch them. Make sure you are an owner on that profile.
Notice what is not on the list: your reputation, your customers, and the reviews they left. Those belong to the business, not to whoever built the pages.
When the Designer Will Not Reply
Many handovers begin here. The designer may be overloaded, unwell, winding down, or simply not answering. Assume nothing about why, and keep every message polite and in writing. A clear, friendly request often works where frustration does not.
A good first message asks for specific things rather than "everything":
- Transfer of the domain to your own registrar account, or the transfer code to do it yourself.
- A full backup of the site files and database, if they host it.
- Owner access to Google Search Console, Analytics and your Google Business Profile, if they set these up.
- Login details for any platform or builder account the site runs on.
- Details of where your email is hosted.
Give a reasonable time to reply and keep a copy of what you sent. If there is still nothing, there are routes that do not depend on them:
- Domain. If you are the named registrant, the registrar can usually help you regain control after checking your identity. For .uk domains, Nominet handles disputes where the registrant itself is in question. Contact the registrar directly and explain the situation.
- Google accounts. Search Console can be verified again by whoever controls the domain or the site. Google Business Profile has its own process for requesting access.
- Content. While the site is still live, save every page, download your images and copy your text into a document. If the site later goes offline, this is what you rebuild from.
If you have a written agreement, check what it says about ownership and handover. If the situation becomes a genuine dispute over money or rights, that is a question for someone qualified to give legal advice, not for a web company.
The Handover, Step by Step
Every move is slightly different, so read this as an order of work rather than a fixed schedule. How long each step takes varies with how much access you have at the start.
- Secure the domain. Get it into an account in your name, or at least get the login. Nothing else should move before this.
- Find your email. Note exactly which provider handles it, so the settings can be carried across or left alone.
- Save what exists. A backup from the designer if possible, plus your own copy of every page's text and images.
- List every page address. The current sitemap, if there is one, or a list from Search Console. This list is what the redirects are built from later.
- Note what currently brings visits. Which pages appear in Google and get clicked. These are the pages that must not go missing.
- Build or copy the new site. On a temporary address, so the old site keeps running for customers in the meantime.
- Set up redirects. Each old address pointing to the most relevant new one.
- Switch the domain over. Point the DNS at the new hosting, keeping the email settings intact.
- Test everything. Pages, forms, email, phone links, and a sample of old addresses to confirm they redirect.
- Tell Google. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and watch for errors.
- Close the old accounts last. Only once the new site has been running cleanly should old hosting be cancelled.
The last step catches people out. Cancelling old hosting the day the new site launches feels tidy, but if something was missed, the old copy is the only place to find it. Overlap costs a little and buys a safety net.
The rule of thumb: nothing should disappear until its replacement is working. Old site until the new one is live. Old email settings until new ones are tested. Old hosting until you are sure.
Keeping Your Place in Google
This is the part people worry about most, and with reason. A site that has been live for some years may have pages that Google trusts for particular searches, and links from other sites pointing at particular addresses. Those are worth protecting.
The good news is that Google is used to sites moving. What it needs is clear signals about where each page has gone.
Redirects are the heart of it
A redirect tells browsers and search engines that a page has moved permanently and where to find it. If your boiler repair page used to live at one address and now lives at another, a redirect sends anyone, and any search engine, from the old address to the new one. What a 301 redirect is explains the mechanics.
A few practical points:
- Redirect page to page. Send each old page to its closest match, not everything to the homepage. A visitor looking for a service should land on that service.
- Keep addresses where you can. If the new site can use the same page addresses as the old one, fewer redirects are needed at all.
- Do not forget old links. Pages from years ago, still linked from a directory or a local news story, deserve a redirect too.
- Carry the basics over. Titles, descriptions and the main text on pages that perform well should not be thrown away without reason. What a title tag is covers why those matter.
When Operosus moves a site, every old address is redirected to its new home, so nothing the business had in Google is thrown away. Whoever does your move, ask them directly how they handle this.
Checking after the switch
Some movement in search results after a move is normal while Google reprocesses the pages. What you want to avoid is a lasting drop caused by something that was missed. Check these in the weeks afterwards:
- Search Console's page indexing report, for addresses returning errors.
- A handful of old addresses typed by hand, to confirm they land on the right new pages.
- Searches for your business name and your main services in your area, to see the new pages appearing.
- Your enquiries. If calls and forms carry on, the move has done its job.
If you are also changing a lot at once, such as new pages, new wording and new structure, it becomes harder to tell what caused any change in results. That leads to the next decision.
Copy the Old Site or Rebuild It?
A move is a natural point to ask whether the site was doing its job in the first place. Sometimes the old site is fine and the only problem was the person looking after it. Sometimes the site itself is part of why enquiries were thin.
| Situation | Usually sensible |
|---|
| Site brings steady enquiries, only support was the problem | Move it as it is, change things gradually afterwards |
| Site is on a builder account you control | Keep the platform and add new help, or rebuild if moving away |
| Files cannot be recovered | Rebuild from saved content, keeping page addresses where possible |
| Site brings visits but few calls | Worth looking at the pages themselves, not just the host |
| Site is old, slow or hard to use on a phone | A rebuild may make more sense than a straight copy |
Redesign or fix your website walks through that choice in more depth. If calls are the real problem, why a website gets clicks but no calls is a good place to start.
One caution either way: if you rebuild, carry across the pages that already earn visits, with their content intact or improved, rather than starting from a blank page. The aim of a move is to keep what works.
Questions to Ask the New Designer
Having been let down once, it is fair to ask more questions the second time. Answers to these tell you a great deal about whether the next arrangement will be better.
- Whose name will the domain and accounts be in? The answer you want is yours.
- How will you handle redirects from my old addresses? Listen for a page-by-page answer.
- What happens to my email during the switch?
- Can I make small changes myself, or does every change go through you? Waiting on one person for every edit is often how the last arrangement went wrong.
- If we part ways later, what do I take with me? A good designer answers this calmly.
- What will it cost, and what is included? Get it in writing. Prices vary a great deal with what the site needs, and website running costs per year sets out the usual ongoing costs.
The question about changes is worth dwelling on. A site that needs a developer for every new price or opening time tends to stop changing. Operosus built its editor around that problem: owners type what they want changed, see the old wording against the new, and publish it themselves. Whoever you choose, make sure the arrangement does not leave you waiting again.
A Calm Summary
Moving to a new designer is rarely as dangerous as it feels from inside a stalled relationship with the old one. The things that matter most, your domain, your Google reviews and your customers, either already belong to you or can be brought under your control. The rest can be copied, recovered or rebuilt.
Secure the domain first. Find out where your email lives. Save your content while the site is still up. List your page addresses so every one can be redirected. Build the new site alongside the old, switch over carefully, test, and close the old accounts last.
If you want to see where your current site stands before deciding anything, the free website review shows your home page as Google sees it and what an AI assistant would tell a customer about you, which is a useful record to keep before any move.
