— Practice / Managed IT
Switching IT providers, without the outage.
Switching feels risky because your current provider holds the keys — passwords, backups, the domain, the Microsoft 365 tenant. Done in the right order, it is routine: secure what is yours first, run old and new in parallel, and switch nothing off until its replacement is verified. This page is the order of operations — useful whoever you switch to.
— Before you say anything
Secure these first.
Every item on this list belongs to your business, not to your provider. Confirm you hold each one before you give notice — while the relationship is still ordinary.
- Global administrator credentials for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, on an account your business owns
- Domain registrar and DNS logins — the single most common hostage item
- A current backup you have watched restore, not just a report saying backups ran
- Documentation: what runs where, licence lists, vendor accounts, renewal dates
- Clarity on ownership — which licences, hardware, and tools are yours versus rented through them
- The contract: notice period, offboarding obligations, and data-return terms
— The transition
Thirty days, run in parallel.
Weeks one and two — assess and document
The incoming provider inventories everything — devices, accounts, backups, network, vendors — and takes verified copies of credentials and documentation. Nothing is switched off. Your current provider keeps running exactly as before.
Week three — cut over in waves
Monitoring, patching, and the helpdesk route move to the new provider, one system at a time, each verified before the next. For your staff the change is one email address; for the systems it is a handover, not a restart.
Week four — verify and offboard formally
A restore is tested on the new backup line, access is revoked on the old side, and the offboarding is confirmed in writing — what was returned, what was revoked, what was decommissioned. The file that makes the next switch, if there ever is one, boring too.
— A fair word
About your current provider.
Most IT providers are honest, and professional offboarding is a normal part of the trade — many will hand over cleanly and wish you well. Two things are still true: a provider who resists returning credentials that belong to you is telling you something, and one bad month is not a reason to switch. A pattern is. If what you actually have is a fixable relationship, the assessment will say that too.
— How it works with us
The engagement.
Same five-step method as every SetKernel engagement — Brief, Architect, Sprint, Ship, Operate — each with a written artefact you review. A switch starts with a confidential written brief: how many people and devices, what systems you run, your notice period, and what prompted the move. You get a fit / no-fit answer and, if fit, a scoped price within one business day; the transition plan follows in the engagement memo. What the ongoing relationship covers afterwards is on our device management and managed services pages.
— Questions
Before you write.
Can our current provider hold our data or passwords hostage?
The credentials, domain, and data belong to your business — and a written MSP contract’s data-return terms usually confirm it. Check yours before you rely on it. In practice, recovery is slow and painful if you never held the keys yourself — which is why the order of operations on this page starts with securing them while the relationship is still ordinary, before any notice is given.
Will there be downtime during the switch?
A properly run switch has none worth noticing. The method is parallel-run: nothing is switched off until its replacement is verified, and the helpdesk handover is a routing change, not an outage. The risky version is the big-bang cutover on a Friday — which is exactly what the thirty-day shape exists to avoid.
Do we have to wait until our contract ends?
Usually not. Reading your contract and inventorying your own environment are yours to do at any time, so the assessment and preparation can start immediately. The formal cutover is timed around your notice period — we review the notice and offboarding terms with you as part of the assessment and plan the dates accordingly.
What if we manage IT ourselves right now and this is our first provider?
Then you skip the offboarding half and keep the rest: the same inventory, documentation, and baseline work is how we onboard any environment. The secure-these-first list is still worth doing — it is your business owning its own keys, provider or not.
How do we start?
Send a short written brief — people count, device count, what you run, your notice period, and what prompted the switch. We treat switch enquiries as confidential and reply in writing within one business day with fit / no-fit and, if fit, a scope and price.
— Engage
Thinking about switching?
Tell us what you run and what prompted the move — in confidence. We reply in writing within one business day.