SaaS handover: transferring ownership post-close
A complete handover checklist for transferring a SaaS business: code, infra, payments, domains, and customer comms.
- Transfers usually take 5–10 business days. Plan for 15.
- Payments (Stripe) is the item that goes wrong most often. Do it first.
- Customer email should come from the seller, not the buyer, on day one.
The transfer sequence
1. Stripe account transfer (or new Stripe with subscription migration). 2. Domain transfer (registrar to registrar). 3. Repo access (GitHub org transfer). 4. Cloud infra (AWS/GCP org invite, then billing switch). 5. Third-party accounts (analytics, email, monitoring). 6. Customer announcement email.
What the seller should provide
Loom walkthroughs of every workflow. Runbook for common issues. 30–60 day Slack access for questions. A written 'here's what breaks and how to fix it' doc.
FAQs
Yes, via Stripe's account transfer or subscription migration API. Requires seller cooperation and 3–5 business days.
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