How to accept a website from a contractor: a 10-point checklist

The site is ready; the contractor has sent a link and the final invoice. This is the time to check, not celebrate. Mistakes missed at handover cost more later: access gets lost, the domain turns out to be registered to someone else, and bugs have to be fixed for extra money. Here’s a checklist for accepting any website.

1. The domain and hosting are registered to you

This is the key point. The domain must be registered to your company or to you personally, and the registrar account must use your email. The same goes for hosting or the server. If everything is in the contractor’s name, any dispute puts your entire site at risk.

2. You have all the access

• The site’s admin panel — under your own account, not the developer’s shared login.
• Hosting or server, control panel, database.
• Domain registrar and DNS.
• Domain email, if it was set up.
• Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica, Search Console, Webmaster — with you as owner.
• Payment system, SMS service and CRM accounts.

Store the credentials in a password manager, not in a Telegram chat.

3. You have the source code

Ask for access to the repository (GitHub, GitLab) or an archive with the source code and a database dump. Make sure the contract states that rights to the code and design transfer to you. Otherwise any new contractor will start from scratch.

4. The site works on every device

Open the site on your phone, on a colleague’s phone with a different system (iPhone and Android), on a laptop and on a large monitor. Check that:

• nothing is cut off or runs off the screen;
• the menu opens and closes;
• buttons are easy to tap;
• images are sharp and load quickly.

5. Forms and requests arrive

Submit a request through every form on the site — and make sure it arrives where it should: email, Telegram or CRM. Check that the visitor sees a success message. A broken form is the most expensive and least noticeable mistake.

6. Payments and orders

For an online store, walk through the whole customer journey: find a product, add it to the cart, check out, pay, receive a receipt and a notification. Test cancellations and refunds in test mode.

7. You can manage the content

Ask for a short training session or a video guide: how to add a product, change a price, publish news, replace a banner. Try it yourself while the contractor is there. If every small change requires a developer, the admin panel has a problem.

8. SEO and analytics

• The site is open for indexing (no block in robots.txt).
• Pages have unique titles and descriptions.
• The sitemap.xml works.
• Redirects from the old site are set up.
• Analytics counters collect data, and lead goals are configured.

9. Security and backups

• The site runs on HTTPS with no browser warnings.
• Admin passwords are strong, and test accounts are deleted.
• Automatic backups are set up — and you know where they’re stored and how to restore the site.

10. Legal pages

Privacy policy, consent to personal data processing in forms, a public offer for stores, company details.

Accept the site against a checklist, not by eye. Anything that doesn’t work on handover day should be fixed within the project, not for extra pay.

Warranty

Find out how long the warranty period is and what it covers: bug fixes — yes, new features — usually not. Put it in the contract. For further development, agree on support with a clear SLA: response times and a scope of work.

By the way, in our client portal you can see the status of every task at every stage of the project — so you approach handover with no surprises.