Insight: Leaving your IT provider: what a proper handover looks like, and what it costs

Leaving your IT provider cleanly comes down to running the handover as a short project. Get the outgoing provider, the incoming provider and yourself agreed on who does what, when, and what hands over. Expect to pay both sides, allow around a month of overlap, and remove the old provider's access once it's done.

Most of the attention in switching IT providers goes on who you're moving to. That's right. It's the most important decision in the whole process, and we've covered choosing an IT provider separately. But the handover itself, getting out cleanly from the provider you're leaving, gets far less thought, and it's where most of the friction comes from.

If you want the full picture of how a switch works week by week, start with How to switch IT providers. This piece is about the handover: the three parties involved, what your outgoing provider owes you, what it costs, and what to check before their access is gone.

What are the real risks when you leave an IT provider?

For a firm of twenty to a hundred staff, your email and files live in Microsoft 365 or Google. They don't stop working because you've changed provider. Done properly, there is no downtime and nobody gets locked out.

The real risks in a handover are different. Frustration. Wasted time and energy. Confusion, disagreements and unclear responsibilities. That's what a badly run handover looks like now, and it's entirely avoidable.

How to run an IT provider handover

A handover is not complicated, but it does need to be run like a small project. Four steps cover it.

1. Agree who does what, when, and what hands over

Agree three things up front:

• Who does what. One pair of hands on the steering wheel at any time, and everyone knows exactly who is responsible for each piece.
• When. Dates for when each service transfers, agreed by all three parties.
• What. What access, what documentation and what information needs to hand over.

2. Get all three parties in the room

Get the outgoing provider, the incoming provider and yourself aligned at the start. That usually means a direct meeting or two, and you should be in the room. Occasionally an outgoing provider will refuse to deal with the new one at all, on the grounds that they're not the client. Technically true, and easily solved: get all three parties round the table on a Teams or Zoom call. Your job in that meeting is mostly to say you want this clean, tidy, on time and on budget, then sit as a witness and take the minutes.

3. Name an owner on your side

Name someone on your side to own the handover. However lean your team, that means a stakeholder and a project manager, even if they are the same person.

4. Allow around a month of overlap

Once everyone's aligned, the rest can happen over email and tickets. Allow an overlap of around a month. Support usually moves to the new provider in the final week of a four-week onboarding.

What your outgoing provider owes you

The outgoing provider's job is not to teach the new one how to do IT. A capable incoming provider does its own discovery and verifies everything it inherits.

What the outgoing provider does owe you is cooperation. That means attending the handover meetings, answering questions, providing clarifications, and handing over admin credentials, documentation and anything else the new provider needs to take responsibility. Sometimes a walkthrough of anything unusual.

None of that is day-to-day support. It's a project, and it's reasonable for it to be chargeable.

What if your old IT provider has no documentation?

It's worth knowing in advance that the provider you're leaving often simply doesn't have the information. They don't have the documentation, they don't have the process, and they've never put much importance on that kind of thing. That may well be part of why service was poor and why you're leaving. Offboarding exposes those gaps like nothing else.

Don't let it derail you. It just means the incoming provider has some discovery work to do, and that needs to be planned and paid for.

What does an IT provider handover cost?

Expect to pay for the handover on both sides, and treat that as a good sign rather than a cost to negotiate away.

For the outgoing provider, that's the offboarding project described above. For the incoming provider, the market norm is an onboarding charge of around a month's fees, set as a fixed project, which usually lands in the low thousands. Done properly, the work involved is often considerably more than that.

If you try to get offboarding and onboarding done for free, whoever's involved is incentivised to half do it or not do it at all. That creates real risk down the line: the new provider takes responsibility without the information to do the job. Then one day you can't print, can't sign in, or something simple like a domain, an SSL certificate or a VPN comes up for renewal that nobody knew about, and everyone's scrambling in an emergency.

The investment now buys you a provider who has gone and found the information, documented it, and can be properly responsible for it. If your old provider never had it, you're paying the new one to build what should have existed all along.

Who does what, at a glance

If you're planning a move and want to know what the handover would involve for your firm, book a no-strings discovery call.

What needs documenting during the handover?

If you haven't already got these documented, the handover is the ideal time to align on them:

• Key processes: new starters, new computers, and just as importantly leavers, decommissioning and tracking of equipment.
• Permissions and approvals: where you need an audit trail or a business case for access to folders, SharePoint sites, files and email, whether for regulatory reasons or your own governance.
• Who should be consulted, who your VIPs are, and any particular locations or time zones that need handling differently.
• The non-discoverable essentials: your Microsoft or Google tenant, domain registrations, firewalls and security tools, local admin accounts on computers.

What problems come up during an IT handover?

Expect the odd surprise. We've taken over firms where a domain came up for renewal mid-transfer. The answer was simple: renew it where it sat, keep everything running, and transfer it soon after. The priority is always keeping everything running. It just needs surfacing and agreeing.

We've found domains muddled into an old provider's single registrar account alongside all their other clients, because that was the quickest way of doing it at the time. Untangling them became its own mini project alongside the main handover. And we've audited servers during an onboarding and found the backups weren't fit for purpose.

None of that is a disaster. It's rather the point: the handover is your chance to properly understand your risks and fix them. But it does produce unexpected work, which is why the project has to be flexible.

That experience is where this guide comes from. Ratcliff IT has been a Microsoft partner since 2009, is Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and has been named one of Britain's Top 50 Best Managed IT Companies for eight consecutive years.

What are the red flags when leaving an IT provider?

Most handovers are civil and professional. But watch for these:

• No clear path or timeline to handing over credentials and access. If you or the new provider are accepting responsibility, there is no legitimate reason to withhold it.
• Refusing to deal with the incoming provider. Solved with a three-way call, but worth noting how the relationship is being handled.
• Your domain registered under the provider's account rather than your own. We see this constantly, usually with the excuse that it's tangled up with other clients on the same account. This is the ideal time to set up your own registrar account and move your domains cleanly into it.
• Data or backups held where you can't get at them. Backup contracts with bona fide third-party providers such as Microsoft, ConnectWise, Kaseya or Datto can often be novated, meaning the contract transfers to the new provider rather than starting from scratch.
• Compliance gaps in the transition. If email archives or backups matter for compliance, you may need to run old and new systems in parallel for a period. Plan for it rather than discovering it.

Who removes the old IT provider's access?

This is the step everybody forgets. Once handover is complete, the outgoing provider's access needs to come out of everything. Admin accounts, remote access tools, and anywhere they're listed as an authorised contact, such as your ISP or other suppliers.

This is a process the business should own, not the IT provider. In practice the new provider will do most of the work: removing access, cycling accounts and credentials, and making sure no third party can get in. But it should be documented and reported back to you, and it should sit on your own access control register. If you work to Cyber Essentials, FCA requirements or ISO 27001, that register is part of your governance anyway. Ideally the old provider, the new provider and the business all work from the same list of what access exists. Make sure it's done and ticked, not assumed.

It's the same principle as a staff leaver: leavers are a security event, not an admin job.

Do phones, internet lines and leases need to move?

Some things may not be able to move, and it doesn't matter. You're not going to change your internet lines; at most the billing changes. Telephony and hardware leases can stay where they are too. As long as the phones keep working there's no real dependency, and worst case those contracts simply run on under the old arrangements while everything else transfers. Don't let them hold up the handover.

Will the new provider change your firewall and security tools?

If your new provider is taking responsibility for your security and uptime, expect to move onto their firewall and the tooling behind their managed cyber security services. That's not a lock-in tactic. It's alignment, and it's an investment in them being able to stand behind the service. A provider who takes responsibility for an environment they didn't build and don't standardise on is making you a promise they can't keep.

Are you ready to start the handover?

Before you give notice, check you can answer yes to these:

• Do you know your notice period, the required method of notice and your renewal date?
• Are your Microsoft or Google tenant and your domain registered to your business?
• Have you named someone on your side to own the handover?
• Have you budgeted for offboarding and onboarding?

If any answer is no, sort that first. We cover the contract trap and when to start looking in How to switch IT providers.

Common questions about leaving your IT provider

Does my outgoing IT provider have to cooperate with the handover?

They should. Attending handover meetings, answering questions and handing over credentials and documentation are a normal part of leaving. It isn't their job to teach your new provider how to do IT, but it is their job to hand over what someone else needs to take responsibility.

Is it normal to pay my old IT provider for offboarding?

Yes. Offboarding is a project rather than day-to-day support, and it's reasonable for it to be chargeable. If it's done for free, nobody is incentivised to do it properly.

How long does an IT provider handover take?

Allow an overlap of around a month. Onboarding with the new provider typically runs as a four-week project, with support moving across in the final week. Most take a little longer in practice, and that's fine.

Do I need to be involved in the handover?

Yes, though not in the technical work. Be in the room for the first meeting with both providers, name someone on your side to own the handover, and answer questions quickly so nothing stalls.

Can my backups move to the new provider?

Often, yes. Backup contracts with established third-party providers such as Microsoft, ConnectWise, Kaseya or Datto can often be novated, so the contract transfers to the new provider rather than starting again.

Talk it through before you give notice

If you're planning to leave your IT provider, start with a no-strings discovery call with James Ratcliff. You'll talk to James directly, not a salesperson. We'll go through where you are with your current provider, what a handover would involve for your firm, and what it would cost. Book a no-strings discovery call.

Not ready to talk yet? The IT Provider Scorecard gives you an honest read on your current provider in a few minutes. To see how we run a switch from the other side, see changing your IT provider or how we deliver managed IT support in London.