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The Process of Transferring Ownership of a Website. 4 Simple Steps

Ready to put your website into someone else’s capable hands?

There are many different reasons why someone may want to transfer their website over to a new owner, but fortunately the steps tend to be the same. It may not be as easy as handing over your login credentials to the new owner, mind you, but it’s also not an overly complicated process.

Here are the 4 simple steps in the process of transferring ownership of a website.

Step 1: Give the New Owner Access to Your Hosting Account

They’re not going to be able to make any changes to the website if they can’t get into your hosting account, so it’s important to make sure it’s accessible. This first step requires roughly the same process regardless of your hosting service.

The first thing you should do is change all of the account’s contact information so that it reflects the new owner. You don’t want to leave any of your personal details behind, especially something like the billing information.

Now you can give the login credentials to the new owner. While they don’t necessarily have to, they should then change the password to ensure they’re the only one with access to the account.

Step 2: Transfer Domain Ownership

This step is only necessary if you’re not using your hosting provider to deal with your website’s domain. If you are, then the new owner should be able to change the domain themselves once they take over your hosting account. Otherwise, if you used different registrars to manage your domain, then you have two options. 

The first is to give the new owner access to your entire account on that platform. This is probably your best option if you only have one domain associated with the account.

If you have multiple domains, on the other hand, then you’ll want to initiate a domain transfer. Once you find the option (it may work differently on different registrars), you will likely just have to provide the new owner’s email to start the process.

Step 3: Hand Over Credentials to Third-Party Services and Accounts

Your website transfer is pretty much complete with the first two steps, but the new owner may also want access to any associated third party accounts that you may have used to build and maintain your website. In most cases all you really have to do is the same as Step 1: change the contact information and other personal details and send them the login information.

However, if you used something like Google Analytics, you’re probably not going to want to hand over your entire Google account. In this situation, you’ll need to move your web property to their Google Analytics account.

Step 4: Transfer Over Any Remaining Files

If you have any other files relating to your website stored on your computer, then you should consider sending them to the new owner. This could be anything from your logo to any custom icons or even a whole style guide.

Once you’ve found everything, you can either throw them together in a zip file and email them to the new owner or, if it’s still accessible to you, upload the files via FTP to your server.

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