The scenario is more common than you'd think. A tradesperson wants to develop their site: their provider hasn't replied for months. A shopkeeper is no longer satisfied: she doesn't dare leave, convinced she'd have to start again from scratch.
This fear is understandable, but it's almost always overblown. A well-handled change of provider loses neither the site, nor the domain, nor the emails, nor your place on Google. Here's the method, step by step, starting with the question everyone finds out about too late.
The awkward question: what belongs to you?
French law holds a surprise for many business owners.
The code and design of your site don't automatically belong to whoever paid for them. Under copyright law, the creator (the agency, the freelancer) remains the holder of the rights to what they created, unless your contract contains a precise, written assignment of those rights. No clause, no assignment: you have a right to use the site, not full ownership.
Your content, on the other hand, is yours. The text you wrote, your photos, your product descriptions: you're the author. Just be careful with content created by third parties (photographer, copywriter), which follows the same written-assignment rule.
The domain name belongs to its official registrant. Not to whoever manages it: to whoever's name appears in the registration. We've explained how to check that registrant in two minutes (the Afnic directory or Whois): it's the first check to make, before any other step.
And in practical terms, do you have the right to move the site? In most cases, yes: the right of use you paid for covers running your site, and therefore keeping it working, including elsewhere. It's modifying or reusing the code without an assignment that can raise questions. For a like-for-like move, the matter is almost always settled amicably; for an open dispute or serious doubt, a lawyer will rule on your specific contract.
So the first thing to do: dig out what you signed (a contract, or simply the quote and emails, which are also proof of what you paid) and read it with these questions in mind.
Step 1: the inventory, before any contact
Before you even notify your provider, map out what exists. For each item: who owns it, where it is, who has the access.
- The domain name: with which registrar (the provider it's registered with), and who is the registrant?
- The hosting: which provider, which renewal date?
- The site: do you have admin access? Technical access (files, database)?
- The emails: which addresses exist on your domain, and where are they hosted?
- The third-party accounts: Search Console (Google's free tool that tracks your presence in the results), your analytics, the Google Business Profile, the email marketing tool. Who owns these accounts?
- The licences: does your site use paid elements (a design template, plugins) whose licence belongs to the provider?
Can't fill in these boxes? Two goldmines: your invoices and your bank statements. What you pay every year tells you who bills you for what (domain, hosting, maintenance), and it's often there that you discover the famous mystery charge.
A word about the Google Business Profile, vital for a shop: if the agency owns it, ask them to transfer ownership (a standard operation in the profile's interface). If they've vanished, Google lets you claim the profile of your own business.
This inventory tells you exactly what to ask for, and it turns a vague break-up into a list of concrete points.
Step 2: back up everything, cancel nothing
The golden rule of the whole operation comes down to one sentence: the old hosting stays active until the new site is approved. Cancelling too early is the one truly irreversible mistake: files, database and mailboxes are deleted.
Before any switch, secure:
- The site files and the database (your current or future provider can handle this; the host often offers a backup tool).
- Your content in a reusable format: text, images, product descriptions.
- Your emails: the mailbox history is copied to the new platform before any change, more on this below.
If your provider is still reachable, this is the moment to formally request this complete archive: it's a normal request, provided for in serious contracts.
A special case to face head-on: the "rented" site. If your site lives on a subscription on the provider's closed platform (the "€29-a-month site" packages often are), it generally can't be recovered as is: the platform doesn't export. What you recover then is what matters: the domain name, your text, your photos and your reviews; the site itself is rebuilt. It's less serious than it looks, and above all it's a point to check before signing next time.
And the contract with the agency? Reread its term, its notice period and any automatic renewal, then cancel in writing (a registered letter is proof) at the right deadline. If you only signed a quote with no fixed term, the relationship ends more simply: you settle what's owed, and your invoices remain your proof of ownership.
Step 3: recovering the domain name
This is the centrepiece, because the domain carries the site and the emails.
The favourable case: you're the registrant. The procedure is standard: unlock the domain at the current registrar, get the transfer code (called AUTH_INFO), and start the transfer at the new registrar. Allow a few days, during which the site stays online.
The provider is unreachable? If you're the registrant, not everything is stuck: for a .fr, Afnic has recovery procedures that a registrar can carry out for you when your contact has vanished. For a .com or another extension, the transfer-by-code mechanism is the same, and international dispute procedures exist too: your new registrar will be able to guide you.
The provider made themselves the registrant in your place? Start with a written request for a change of registrant, pointing out that the domain matches your brand and your business. If refused, Afnic offers dispute-resolution procedures: mediation, then Syreli, a formal procedure that's faster and cheaper than a court case. And the judicial route remains open. Your evidence (contract, invoices, exchanges) carries real weight: keep everything.
Step 4: migrating the site and emails, with no downtime
The principle that avoids any interruption: duplicate first, switch over afterwards.
For the site: the new provider copies the files and the database to the new hosting, tests everything on a temporary address (pages, forms, mobile), and only when it all works, points the domain to the new server. As far as your visitors can tell, nothing happened.
For the emails, same logic, in this order: create the mailboxes on the new platform, copy the message history (hosts offer dedicated migration tools), and change last the domain setting that directs the mail (the "MX" records). Followed properly, this order loses neither a message nor a single day of incoming mail.
On the cost side, the operation is modest: a domain transfer is billed at around the price of a year's renewal (about ten euros), the overlap of the two hosting plans during the switch comes to a few euros, and the migration work itself is most often included in the new provider's project. The real cost of a botched change, on the other hand, would be measured in lost visibility: hence the method.
Step 5: protecting your SEO
It's the number-one fear, so let's start with the reassuring part: if you keep your domain and your page addresses, Google doesn't see the difference. Changing provider or host, with an identical site, doesn't affect your rankings.
The risk appears when the addresses change: a new domain, or a redesign that reorganises the pages. There, four moves make all the difference:
- An inventory of the existing addresses (especially those bringing in traffic, visible in Search Console).
- Permanent, page-by-page redirects: each old address automatically points to its replacement. It's the move that transfers your Google history; without it, the search engine starts from scratch.
- The sitemap updated and submitted in Search Console, and a check that the new site hasn't been left stuck in "blocked to search engines" mode (the classic go-live mistake).
- A few weeks of monitoring: traffic, 404 errors, rankings. A passing fluctuation is normal; it settles when the migration is clean.
These moves aren't optional, they're the heart of the job. When Pixel Prisme takes over an existing site, the inventory of addresses and the page-by-page redirects are part of the migration to the new site, precisely so that your Google history follows you.
One piece of advice every migration guide repeats: don't take the move as a chance to rewrite everything at the same time. Migrate first, improve afterwards: if something shifts, you'll know why. And if your project is precisely a redesign, we spelled out the trade-off in optimise or rebuild your site.
The exit is prepared at the entrance
This whole guide deals with a situation that, with a good contract from the start, would have posed no problem at all. For your next collaboration, four clauses to insist on:
- A written assignment of rights to the code, the design and the content created for you.
- The domain registered in your name, with the provider only as the technical contact.
- An exit clause: at the end of the contract, the handover of a complete archive of the site, your content in a reusable format, and all the access credentials.
- The third-party accounts in your name (Search Console, analytics, Google profile), with the provider merely a guest.
This is exactly Pixel Prisme's philosophy, and it's written in black and white: domain in your name, content yours, access handed over, open technologies another professional can take over. We told the full story in how a project unfolds with us: the exit is planned from the entrance, and it's actually the best reason to stay.
And if you're in the middle of leaving a provider, we regularly take over existing sites: inventory, recovery, downtime-free migration and preserved SEO are part of the work, within our plans at public prices.
In short
Switching web provider without losing anything comes down to a method. First check who owns what: the domain, then the contract. Inventory and back up everything before acting. Recover the domain, then duplicate and switch over the site and the emails, in that order. And if the page addresses change, protect your SEO with page-by-page redirects.
The only fatal mistake is cancelling the old hosting too early. Everything else can be put right, even faced with an unreachable provider, thanks to the registries' procedures and your written evidence.
If you're considering this change and want an honest assessment of your situation (who owns what, what to recover, how to migrate), Pixel Prisme will lay it out for you in 30 minutes: let's talk, no strings attached.