What a Web Designer Should Hand Over at Launch
A website handover checklist is the least exciting document in any project and the one that decides whether you own what you paid for.
Launch day feels like the end. Handover is the part that matters.
Plenty of Kenyan businesses reach launch, admire the new site, pay the balance, and only discover months later that they hold none of the access required to change anything. By then the designer has moved on, and every small edit becomes a favour.
This website handover checklist covers the ten items you should receive, how to test each one, and the order to do it in.
Why This Happens So Often
A website handover checklist gets skipped because handover is invisible work. Nobody asks for it during the sales conversation, and no client inspects it with the enthusiasm they bring to the homepage design.
Furthermore, incomplete handover rarely looks like a problem on launch day. The site works, everybody is pleased, and the gap only appears when you need to change something or move somewhere else.
So the checklist below matters most at exactly the moment you are least inclined to think about it.
The Ten Item Website Handover Checklist
1. Registrar login, with written confirmation that your business is the registered owner of the domain.
2. Hosting control panel login, with the account in your business name.
3. Website administrator login, at full administrator level rather than editor or contributor.
4. A complete backup of the website files and database, supplied to you as a downloadable copy.
5. Any third party accounts created on your behalf, including analytics, email tools, booking systems, payment dashboards, and search console access.
6. The SSL certificate details, including whether it renews automatically and when.
7. Email account access, where addresses on your domain were part of the work.
8. A list of every plugin, theme, or licensed component, noting which carry paid licences, in whose name, and when they renew.
9. Brief written documentation covering how to update text, add images, and publish a page.
10. A named contact and a written statement of what support continues, for how long, and what falls outside it.
Test Everything Before You Pay
Working through a website handover checklist means testing, not reading. Receiving a login is not the same as having access. Test each one while the designer is still responsive.
Log in yourself, from your own device, in a private browser window rather than one where somebody else’s session might still be active.
Change one password after logging in. If that breaks something, you have learned it now instead of in six months.
Confirm your administrator account can actually create a page, upload an image, and edit the menu.
Download the backup and open it. An empty file is a common and unpleasant surprise.
Check the registrar record shows your name rather than theirs.
The Domain Deserves Its Own Paragraph
Of the ten items, one cannot be replaced.
Change hosting and nobody notices. Rebuild the site and you lose time but recover. Lose the domain and every business card, advert, email signature, and search result you have built points somewhere outside your control.
Verify the registrant name personally rather than accepting reassurance. Our post on who actually owns your website explains what goes wrong when nobody checks.
Hold the Final Payment Until Handover Is Complete
Tie the final instalment to a completed website handover checklist. Say so at the start of the project rather than at the end, because raising it late sounds like distrust while raising it early sounds like professionalism.
The structure is simple. Half to begin, half when handover is verified. That aligns everybody’s interest in finishing properly, and any studio operating in good faith will agree without hesitation.
Our guide to web design deposit terms in Kenya covers the payment structures in more detail.
What Poor Handover Looks Like
Logins promised later, once things settle down.
An editor account described as administrator access.
Hosting kept on the designer’s reseller account as a convenience.
A backup that never arrives despite being agreed.
Plugin licences in the designer’s name, which quietly expire when the relationship ends.
No documentation at all, meaning every change requires the person who left.
Each of these is recoverable while somebody is still replying. None of them is easy afterwards, as our post on what to do when a web designer stops replying explains.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I run through a website handover checklist? On launch day, before the final payment clears.
What if my site was built years ago and I never got any of this? Ask now. Request the registrar details, hosting account name, and administrator access in writing. Late is far better than never.
Is it normal for a designer to keep hosting? Managing hosting for you is normal. Being the only person with access is not.
Do I need the backup if the site is live? Yes. A live site is not a backup, since a hack, a failed update, or an expired account can remove it.
What if I do not understand the technical items? Ask the designer to walk you through each login on a call while you test it yourself. That request is entirely reasonable.
Should handover cost extra? No. It is part of delivering the work you already paid for.
Ten Items, One Afternoon
Every item on this website handover checklist is easy to obtain while a designer is still engaged and difficult once they are not.
At Africa Web Experts all ten arrive on launch day as standard. Your domain, your hosting, your login. Websites from KES 65,000, live in seventy two hours.
