full handover
A full handover means everything transfers to the business or to whoever it chooses, code, accounts and documentation, with no fee, if the working relationship isn't delivering.
A full handover is the plainest possible commitment a contractor can make: if the arrangement stops working, for whatever reason, everything moves to the business or to whoever it chooses next, in full, with nothing held back and no fee attached to getting it. Not just the website files. The code, every account created along the way, and documentation explaining how the pieces fit together so whoever picks it up next isn’t starting from zero.
This is worth stating explicitly rather than assuming, because plenty of business owners have been on the other end of an arrangement where leaving meant losing something, a domain, an account, a working relationship with a system they depended on. A full handover removes that risk before it can ever become a real problem.
Why it matters to you
Businesses that have already lost control of something important, a domain held under someone else’s account being the most common version of this, are understandably wary of any new arrangement that could repeat it. Naming a full handover as an explicit, standing option, rather than something you’d have to fight for if things went wrong, is what makes that trust possible. It says clearly: whatever happens, you will never be back in that position again.
It also changes the shape of the relationship day to day. When leaving cleanly is genuinely easy, staying is a real choice rather than something a business is stuck with because untangling everything looks too hard.
How I set it up
Everything I build is already structured to make this possible without a special process. You own the code from the first commit, accounts are in the business’s name rather than mine, and I generally hold access, not ownership throughout. A full handover, in practice, is mostly a matter of formally stepping back from accounts I was invited into and handing over documentation of how everything is configured, rather than untangling ownership that was tangled in the first place.
Because none of the pieces were ever locked to me, there is no fee for this and no negotiation required. It is a standing offer, not a concession that has to be extracted.
What it looks like in practice
If a full handover is triggered, the business ends up with the code repository fully in its own account, every account that was created for the work already carrying the business’s own ownership, and a written explanation of how the site, the domain, and the surrounding systems fit together. Whoever the business brings in next, or if it chooses to run things itself, has everything needed to pick up cleanly, with nothing missing and nothing to chase.
Questions I get about this
- What exactly transfers in a full handover?
- Everything: the code and its repository, every account created for the work, and documentation explaining how it all fits together. Nothing is held back, and there is no fee charged for the transfer itself.
- Does a full handover only happen if things go badly?
- It's offered as a real option specifically because things sometimes don't work out, whatever the reason. It isn't a penalty clause. It's a commitment that the business is never trapped in an arrangement it wants to leave.
- Why mention this before anything has gone wrong?
- Because a business that has been burned before, for example by losing control of its own domain, needs to know upfront that it cannot happen again, not find that out only after a dispute.
Want this set up properly for your business?
This is the kind of thing I build every week. Grab a time and we will talk through what fits.