Your data, your accounts and your domain stay yours through a switch, as long as they are registered in your business’s name. The handover is a list: administrator logins, the domain, the email tenant, the file storage, the backups, the licences, and the written notes on how it is all set up. Ask for that list in writing before you give notice.
Write these down and put a name beside each one, because the name is what matters. The domain and where it is registered. The Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenant and its administrator account. The file storage, wherever it lives. The backup account and the storage behind it. The licences and who they are billed to. The router, firewall and Wi-Fi logins. The remote-access and monitoring software installed on your computers. The website and its hosting. And the documentation: how the network is laid out, what runs where, and which supplier each line is with.
Anything on that list registered to your outgoing provider is a thing you will negotiate for. Anything registered to your business is a thing you simply take.
The domain, registered in the provider’s name years ago when nobody thought about it. The Microsoft tenant, created inside their partner account so your licences sit under their agreement. Backups, held in their storage rather than in an account of yours. Monitoring agents on your machines that only they can remove cleanly. And the quietest one: no documentation at all, so the knowledge leaves with the relationship.
Each has a way out. Some are same-day changes and some take weeks, which is exactly why the list comes before the notice letter.
Work in this order. Find out what is already in your name. Get the handover list in writing, with dates. Let the incoming provider look at what exists before anything moves. Agree the switch date and an overlap. Give your notice in line with the contract. Move the email and the domain last, when everything else is confirmed, and change every shared password at the end.
Keep the outgoing provider informed and polite. A tidy exit is faster than a fight, and most providers hand over properly when they are asked properly and in writing.
Your business records belong to your business. A provider handling personal information for you is doing it on your behalf under Canadian privacy law, and your agreement should say plainly what happens to that information when the relationship ends, how long any copies are kept, and how deletion is confirmed. Ask for that confirmation in writing when the switch is finished.
The agreement runs month to month, and 30 days written notice ends it. On the way out you get the accounts, the passwords, the documentation and the data, along with written notes on how everything is set up so the next people can pick it up without starting over. Our access comes off on the agreed day.
When a business comes to us from another provider, the first weeks look like this.
That document is yours from the first day, which is the point: the next switch, whoever it is to, starts from a written list rather than from memory.
Leave your name and your number. A person calls you back the same business day, usually within an hour, and goes through the ownership list with you before you write to anybody.