At the end of an Elementor project you should walk away with every login in your name, a separate account for day-to-day editing, training on your own site, a written guide, a backup you know exists and a defined support period. A surprising number of business owners we meet have a website they paid for and can’t change. They don’t have a login, or they have one but are scared to touch anything, or the designer who had the passwords stopped answering emails. The site was launched. It was never handed over.
A good handover is what turns “a website someone built for you” into “your website”. This is the detail, whoever builds it. Use it as a checklist before you pay the final invoice.
1. Logins you control
You should have, in writing:
- Your own WordPress login, in your name, with your email address. Not a shared “admin” account.
- The domain registrar login, with the domain registered to your business. For a .com.au, the registrant should be your business entity and ABN.
- The hosting account login, or confirmation that the developer hosts the site and how you’d move it if you left.
- Elementor Pro licence details: whose account it sits under, when it renews and what happens if that account lapses.
- Any other paid plugins or services (forms, backups, email delivery, maps), with renewal dates.
- Google Analytics, Search Console and Google Business Profile with you as an owner, not just a user.
Store these in a password manager, not in an email thread. If your developer keeps everything under their accounts, ask why. Our article on who should own your domain, hosting and logins goes through what to insist on.
2. The right user role for daily editing
WordPress has user roles that control what each login can do. The Administrator role can do everything: install plugins, change settings, delete the site’s users. That’s appropriate for one or two people. It’s not what you want to use every Tuesday to update the specials.
What we recommend for most clients:
- An Administrator account held by the owner, kept for occasional use.
- An Editor account for day-to-day updates. Editors can change pages, posts and media, but can’t install plugins or change core settings.
- Separate accounts for each staff member who edits, so you can remove access when someone leaves.
Elementor adds its own layer through its Role Manager, which can restrict a role to editing content only, so staff can change text and images without adding new elements or restyling the page. For a busy practice where several people update the site, that one setting prevents a lot of accidental redesigns.
3. Training on your actual site
Generic Elementor tutorials teach you every panel and setting. You need to know how to do the five or six things you’ll do every month: update a page, add a blog post, swap a photo, add a team member, change opening hours, check a form submission.
Good training happens on your site, with your content, and ideally with you driving the mouse while the developer watches. Record it if you can. You’ll forget half of it by the time you need it.
Ask specifically to be shown:
- how to edit text and images without touching layout
- where the global colours and fonts are, and why you shouldn’t change styles widget by widget
- how to preview changes before publishing, and how to restore an earlier revision
- where form submissions go, and who receives the emails
- what not to touch (plugins, theme settings, the Theme Builder)
4. A written guide
Training is forgotten. A short written guide isn’t. It doesn’t need to be a manual. A few pages with screenshots covering the tasks above, plus:
- what’s installed and why (theme, key plugins)
- the image sizes to use for banners, team photos and blog posts
- how often backups run and where they’re stored
- who to contact for help, and what’s covered
The best guides are written for your site specifically. “To add a staff member, go to Team > Add New” is useful. A link to Elementor’s documentation isn’t.
5. Proof that a backup exists
Before handover, there should be a full backup of the finished site, stored away from the server it runs on. Ask:
- How often do backups run automatically?
- How long are they kept?
- Has anyone tested a restore?
- Who restores it if something breaks, and what does that cost?
A backup nobody has ever restored is a hope, not a backup.
6. A defined support period
Things come up in the first few weeks: a form email lands in spam, a page looks odd on someone’s older phone, you realise you want a section moved. A support period covers these without a new quote for each.
Get clear on:
- how long it lasts
- what’s included (fixes, small changes, questions) and what isn’t (new pages, redesigns)
- how to ask for help and how quickly you’ll hear back
- what happens afterwards: a maintenance plan, hourly rates, or you’re on your own
7. Measurement switched on
You should leave with the basics tracking from day one: Google Analytics, Google Search Console (with the sitemap submitted), and ideally Bing Webmaster Tools. Form submissions should be tracked as events so you can see enquiries, not just visits. Without this, in six months you’ll have no idea whether the site is doing its job, which is the point of what a small business website should actually do.
Red flags at handover
- You’re told you don’t need a login “because we’ll make changes for you”.
- The domain is registered in the developer’s name.
- The Elementor Pro licence belongs to the developer and isn’t transferable, with no plan for what happens if you part ways.
- No written guide, or a guide that’s just links to YouTube.
- Support ends at launch, with no option for ongoing help.
None of these are necessarily dishonest. Some developers do it out of habit. But each one leaves you dependent on a single person.
What we hand over
Every site in our WordPress and Elementor web design packages comes with training on your site, a written user guide and 30 days of support after launch, along with Google Analytics, Search Console and Bing setup. After that, our care plans cover updates and backups, and our website ownership page explains how we keep you in control of the domain and logins.
Was your site never properly handed over? Recovering the logins is usually the first job, and it’s one we can help you with even if we didn’t build the site.