How to change IT providers without losing a day of work

Most owners who stay with an IT provider they're unhappy with stay for one reason: they're afraid the switch will break something. Email down for a day. Files nobody can reach. A password only the old provider knows.

Done in the right order, a switch is uneventful, and your staff notice only that the phone gets answered. Done in the wrong order, it's how firms get locked out of their own systems. So the order is the whole plan.

Before you tell anyone: five quiet steps

Do these before you give notice, while relations are still good.

1. Read your contract. You're looking for five things:

• The end date, and whether it renews automatically
• The notice period, and how notice has to be given
• Any fee for leaving early
• What the provider must hand over when it ends
• Who owns the equipment in your office, such as the firewall or a backup device, and who owns the software licenses

2. Confirm you hold the keys. For each of these, your firm should have its own administrator login, in the firm's name:

• Your domain name, at the company it's registered with
• Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace
• Your practice software and document system
• The firewall, the Wi-Fi and the printers
• Your backups
• Your internet and phone accounts

If the only administrator on any of them is your provider, fix that first. Ask for an administrator account for a partner "for our records." It's a normal request.

3. Ask for your documentation. A list of your devices, your network layout, your licenses and renewal dates, your vendors, and how the backups run. Insurers and client questionnaires ask for the same things, so nobody will read anything into the request. If it doesn't exist, that tells you something too.

4. Check the backups yourself. Make sure a current copy of your data exists that doesn't depend on the outgoing provider. Some providers keep client backups in their own account, and those can end when the contract does. Ask where yours are and how you'd get a copy.

5. Choose the new provider first. Never give notice with nowhere to go. Use our ten questions to ask and the IT provider scorecard, and ask each candidate exactly how they'd run the handover.

Giving notice

• Put it in writing, the way the contract says.
• Name the end date and list what you expect to be handed over.
• Keep it civil. You need their cooperation for the next few weeks, and most providers give it. This is routine in the industry.
• Tell your new provider the same day, so they're ready.

The handover, week by week

A good one overlaps. For a few weeks you pay both providers, and that overlap is what keeps you working.

Week one: the new provider comes in alongside the old.

• They get their own administrator access; the old provider keeps theirs
• They document everything they find
• They install their monitoring and protection on each computer, before the old tools come off

Weeks two and three: the things underneath get moved.

• Backups are set up under the new provider, and a restore is tested
• Licenses move, if they were bought through the old provider
• Staff are told how to ask for help from now on

Cutover day: the old provider's access ends. Every part of this matters:

• Their administrator accounts are removed
• Their remote-access tools are uninstalled from every computer
• Every shared administrator password is changed
• Any account they created for their own use is found and closed

A former provider with a working login is exactly what insurers mean when they ask who can reach your systems. Get written confirmation from the new provider that it's done.

Week four: check the work. Ask for a list of what was found and fixed, and a date for your first review.

At no point should there be a day with nobody monitoring your computers or nobody backing them up. If a proposed plan has that gap in it, send it back.

Pick your moment

Not tax season for an accounting practice. Not the week before trial. Not the last week of the month at a title company. Choose a quiet fortnight, and start the quiet steps 60 to 90 days before your contract's renewal date.

Warning signs

• "You'll get the passwords when the final invoice is paid." The logins to your own systems are yours. If they're withheld, speak to your lawyer the same day. You can usually also recover control directly from Microsoft, Google or your domain registrar by proving the firm owns the account.
• Your domain name is registered in the provider's name. Get it moved into the firm's name before anything else.
• The provider is the only administrator. See step two.
• Backups you can't export.
• No documentation. Your new provider will have to discover everything from scratch. Allow more time.

What staying costs, against what switching costs

Owners tend to price the switch and forget to price the status quo.

	What it comes to
Switching	A few weeks of paying two providers, some of your time, and any onboarding work the new one quotes
Slow replies	Every hour a fee earner waits on a fix is an hour at their billing rate. Four people losing two hours a month at $200 is $1,600 a month.
Gaps nobody's watching	Unknown, until it isn't. The average reported loss to email payment fraud is about $123,000, by the FBI's 2025 figures.
A wrong answer on an insurance form	A claim that may not be paid
Our Business plan for ten people, for comparison	$1,490 a month

The billing example is only an example; use your own figures.

The reason to pay for IT at all is to stop thinking about it: to know there's someone competent in your corner when something goes wrong. If your current provider gives you that, stay. If you're reading an article about how to leave, they probably don't.

How we take a firm on

In the same order as above. A kickoff call to agree a start date, then your computers, accounts and backups, with the old provider's access removed only once ours is working. Your passwords, documentation and data stay yours throughout, and they go with you if you ever leave us.

To talk it through before you decide anything, book a free review. There's no obligation, and you keep the list of what we'd fix.