What you take with you on turnkey handover day
A turnkey website handover is the day the address opens for a real visitor — not a promise that we will always be on call, and not a year of billed hours. At 3VStyle that moment should leave you with a working site on your domain, a valid SSL certificate, a form that actually delivers enquiries, access to the CMS and hosting, and a short note on how to change copy or a phone number without a developer.
After that the site lives on your side: you pay for the domain and hosting, you update content, and you decide whether anyone is on the hook for incidents. Confusion starts when “turnkey” is read as “nothing else will ever be needed.” Those are different things. Below is what we hand over on publication day, and what stays with the business owner in Transnistria and Moldova.
“Turnkey” means different things to different contractors
The phrase is convenient, so it gets attached to almost anything: a template on a builder with no logins, or “we will run the site forever, it is already in the price.” Before you sign, it is worth locking not the slogan but the moment of transfer.
For us, launch is step five of how we work: deploy to the client’s hosting, a content-editing briefing, and optional monitoring and maintenance. The estimate covers the agreed pages and features. Ongoing support after handoff is not bundled in by default — you add it later if you need it.
Handover day also does not include things nobody can honestly promise: rankings in Google or unlimited new sections “since the site is yours.” Turnkey means a working result against the contract and the ability to edit content yourselves. Development budget is a separate conversation: How much does a website cost and the pricing page.
What should work at the moment of publication
The handover minimum is short. It is enough to show the site to customers and to run ads if you are ready for them.
The site on your domain. Not “let’s look at a staging URL for another month,” but the address you will actually give people. Pages are those locked in the estimate: for a landing page that is one screen with an offer and contacts; for a corporate site, the agreed set of sections — not “a catalogue we remembered on Friday.”
A usable mobile layout. Most regional searches happen on a phone. Buttons, the form, and the number should be reachable without sideways scrolling and without hunting for a tap target.
SSL. The browser should not greet a visitor with a warning about an insecure connection. The certificate is issued for the live domain at publication, not “later, when there is time.”
The lead form. A message or notification reaches the inbox you agreed on: email, Telegram, CRM. A form that only looks as if it works is useless to a business. We test it on the live address before handoff, not only on staging.
Analytics, a second language, or an integration appear on launch day only if they were in the estimate. Local context is on the website development in Transnistria page: we pick hosting so the site stays reachable for an audience in Transnistria.
What access and instructions we hand over
After go-live you should not depend on a single chat with the contractor to change opening hours or upload a photo.
We typically hand over:
- hosting access, or the panel where the site lives — if the account is in your name, as it should be;
- CMS access: a login from which a manager edits copy, pages, and news;
- a short “how to change text” note: where to log in, which block to touch, what not to delete so the layout does not break;
- a briefing: a short walkthrough on the live site, not a lecture on every feature of the system.
We do not promise Figma source files and a git repository “always, for everyone, automatically.” For most business owners it matters more to edit content than to compile the project on their own machine. Custom code, git access, and design files — if you or another contractor actually need them — are written into the estimate in advance, not negotiated on launch day.
Keep the logins yourselves, not only “with the person who built the site.” If an employee or a contractor changes tomorrow, you should still be able to enter hosting and the CMS.
What stays on the client’s side
A site on your hosting also means invoices on your side. That is not a footnote, and it is not “the studio pays forever because this was turnkey.”
Domain and hosting payments. The registrar and the host bill you. If the domain is annual and hosting is monthly, both dates belong on a calendar. A common post-handover “outage” is not a broken layout — it is a card that was not renewed.
Content after launch. New offers, a price change, project photos, vacancies — that is your operations. The CMS exists for this. We show where to click. Writing every new paragraph for you after publication is not part of handover.
Who answers enquiries. The form delivers the message. The reply to the customer is your team. If leads land in a shared inbox nobody reads, the site is not the problem.
On handover day it is worth naming one person: they know where the logins are, when the domain is due, and who watches the form mailbox. Without that, access lives in someone else’s Telegram a month later.
The first week: a small fix is not a new brief
In the first days after publication the site is seen not by you or by us, but by visitors: on someone else’s Android, on another network, with a typo in an email address. Small leftovers are normal. They should be kept apart from a new scope of work.
Typical launch polish: a typo missed at sign-off; a form field that fails on one mailbox; a block that overlaps a button on a specific phone. That is finishing the delivered scope, not “another site on top.”
A new brief is a different conversation: a catalogue of dozens of items, a second language, a portal, a homepage rebuild “now that we have seen it live.” That is a change to the estimate, not “but this was turnkey.” Otherwise the first week becomes an endless acceptance test.
A practical habit: one list of notes, not a drip of one tweak an hour. The form is silent or a page will not load — immediately. “Also invent a franchise block” — the next estimate.
When it is worth taking maintenance or monitoring straight away
Many sites after handoff only need discipline: pay hosting and the domain on time, do not paste Word fragments into the CMS, and once a quarter check that the form still sends. Maintenance is not a mandatory add-on for every landing page.
It is worth a separate agreement if the site is in the money every day — bookings, a store, ads pointed at the form — and nobody in the company can log into hosting when something breaks. If you need someone for incidents after launch, that is website maintenance, not a second handover. Scope and plans are on the technical support page.
Monitoring is an option, not part of the key. It tells you the site is down or SSL is about to expire before a client writes. On its own it fixes nothing: a person does. For a brochure site with no ads, a renewal calendar is often enough. For a landing page with paid traffic, an alert is usually cheaper than silent downtime.
Neither is included in handover by default. On launch day it is enough to know whether you are keeping operations in-house or covering them by contract.
Common questions
Whose hosting do you publish the site on?
Yours. The hosting account and the domain are registered to the client. We deploy the project, check that it opens, and hand over access. Paying the host’s invoices stays with you.
What does CMS training include?
A short walkthrough on the live site: how to log in, where to edit copy and photos, how to publish a change, and what not to touch in block markup. It is not an administrator course and not a promise that any employee will design a new section on the first try.
Do you hand over design source files and the code in git?
CMS and hosting access plus a content-editing note — yes, that is the handover baseline. Figma files and a code repository — by agreement in the estimate, if you actually need them. For most clients, being able to change copy is enough.
How many fixes can we ask for in the first week?
Small leftovers of the delivered scope — yes: a typo, a form failure, an obvious layout bug. A new section, a new language, a restructure — no, that is a change to the estimate. It is better to name that boundary out loud on launch day than to keep it as a feeling.
Do we have to take maintenance immediately?
No. If you renew the domain yourselves, someone on the team can edit the CMS, and an hour of downtime is not critical — you can start without a package. If leads arrive every day and nobody can fix an outage, it is more sensible to cover that by contract now, not after the first incident.
What to do next
If the site is still in planning, the contract should state in one paragraph what launch day includes: what we publish, which access we hand over, what remains on your invoices, what counts as polish, and what is a new brief. If a site was already “delivered” but there are no logins and nobody knows who pays for hosting — that is not a handover, it is an unfinished tail.
3VStyle is a studio in Tiraspol, working across Transnistria and Moldova. The studio lead is Anton Bondarenko. Payment in PMR rubles, a contract with a legal entity or a sole proprietor. We reply to enquiries within 24 hours.
Phone +373 777 53 141, Telegram t.me/siugaron, contact form.