For an owner whose domain, website and email belong to whoever set them up: start with a map, not a fix

Describe what customers see, not what you think is broken

Say what a customer or colleague can no longer do: open the site at one address, receive a message, see a new price after an edit. Add when it last worked and what changed just before, such as a new host, a new mail provider or a designer leaving. You do not need to know which DNS record or setting is at fault. A screenshot and the exact error text are worth more than a guess.

• What fails, for whom, and since when.
• What changed around then.
• What would count as fixed, in words you can check.

Find out who holds what

Four accounts sit behind most small-business websites: the registrar where the domain is registered, the DNS provider that answers for it, the web host and the email provider. They are often held by different suppliers or by a former developer. A repair needs the right account holder to act. Write down, for each, who the account is in the name of and who can sign in. If you cannot sign in anywhere, that is the first thing to fix, and nothing else can start.

• Registrar: domain name, expiry date, who holds the login.
• DNS provider: often the registrar, the host or a CDN.
• Host: where the website files live.
• Email provider: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or the host.

Choose a repair, a move or ongoing care

A repair fixes one fault: a website name that does not open, mail that does not arrive, a redirect loop or a cache that shows old pages on a site behind Cloudflare. A move takes the site, the DNS and the mail to new providers in the right order. Care keeps something true over time: a domain checked against a baseline, a WordPress site updated, backed up and watched. If several things are wrong at once, a baseline project covers backups, hardening, mail authentication and alerts. The repairs and moves are published test prices that have not been tested with buyers, paid after the agreed checks pass and you sign off, or on the schedule in a written proposal for the larger projects; the standing services are billed monthly under written terms.

• One symptom: the matching repair.
• A closing host or a change of provider: the move project.
• Nobody looking after it: the standing services or the baseline project.

What to send, and what not to

Send the domain name, the provider names, what you see and the date it started. Do not send passwords, registrar logins, mailbox contents or customer records. After you agree a scope, access is arranged through a company-controlled secure handoff and, wherever possible, by inviting us with the smallest permissions that work. You can remove them afterwards. An enquiry does not start work, create a booking or take payment, and it does not prove that anyone will buy it. If the account holder will not cooperate, we say so rather than work around them.