Closing your business? What to do with your website, domain, and email

TL;DR? Deciding to close a business isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. You need a wind-down plan that includes your website, domain, and email (i.e., parts of your business’ tech stack) so that you don’t remove vital business infrastructure before you’re ready. How and when you decide to eliminate these is determined by how things interrelate and what you want – or need – to keep for legal, personal, or other reasons.

A lot of business advice is focused on growth. But what happens when you’re ready to move on from the business? Here, the scenarios I’m thinking of look something like:

• You’ve sold the customer list and contracts to a buyer … but not your facility, equipment, or name. (In other words, a piecemeal buyout.)
• You can’t find someone you trust to take over the company … so you’ve decided to close shop naturally as client contracts come to an end. (In other words, by client attrition.)

Once you’re on this pathway, there are a lot of legal and financial details that go into shutting down your business, including:

• Insurance
• Bank Accounts
• Filing Taxes and Other Paperwork

But where do your website and email fit in?

To answer this question, you need to understand how your Domain, website (Web Hosting), and Email are interrelated, what you might need to keep in place and what you can cancel, and how to phase out your website and email – without losing anything you care about keeping.

How Domain, Web Hosting, and Email Work Together

Sometimes these three are bundled together by your provider, but sometimes you’re paying for them separately. When they’re separate, it’s important to understand how they’re related so you can make the right choice for where you’re at.

What your Domain actually does for you (e.g., bloudesigns.com)

Just like your house has a unique address so folks can find it, things on the Internet need a unique address, too. Internet addresses are numbers (IP addresses), but those are hard for humans to remember, so we created a way to associate a unique name with each number.

When you pay to “register” a Domain, you’re paying for the rights to use that unique name for the contract period – even though we sometimes erroneously talk about “owning” the name.

What Web Hosting does for you (e.g., https://bloudesigns.com)

Web Hosting is really just storage space for your web pages. When someone types your Domain Name into a web browser, some behind-the-scenes stuff kicks in and the web pages you’ve created/stored with your web host are displayed.

It’s possible for your Domain Name to be registered with a different company than the one you use for Web Hosting.

How business Email is connected to your Domain (e.g., connect@bloudesigns.com)

Email has a host just like your web pages have a host. These days, your Email Host is usually Microsoft/Outlook or Google Workspace/Gmail, even if you’re paying another company like GoDaddy or Squarespace for the email add-on.

An email address is simply a username + a Domain Name.

How long do you need to keep paying for your Domain name?

As you cut back revenue sources, it’s natural to want to aggressively cut back on costs. Your recurring bills will most certainly include things like Domain Name, Web Hosting, and Email/Office subscriptions.

Here are the issues at stake:

• You’ll typically want to keep at least one business email address up and running while you sort out all of the final communications related to the business.
• You may or may not decide that you want to keep your website up.

If you stop paying for the Domain Name, you lose the rights to use it for things like your Web and Email Hosting.

So, while you want to maintain vital technical infrastructure like (1) your website (2) a business email account or (3) anything else that uses your Domain Name (e.g., an online course site): You need to keep paying for that Domain.

What happens to the business website

As a repository for your web pages and other resources, as well as a touchpoint for communicating the status of the business, what happens here depends on your situation and your goals.

Did you sell the entire business to a new owner?

If you’ve sold the business to someone else, this website is probably transitioning to them. Your provider should be able to guide you through transferring the Domain and Web Hosting (including files) to the new owner.

The acquisition and transition plan you’ve agreed to might provide guidance on when and how you’re removed from the website, but management of that is probably the responsibility of the new owner.

Are you phasing out infrastructure after a piecemeal buyout?

In cases where you sold just the client list and contracts, but not the Domain/website or other parts of your business, you have some options.

• Let it go completely. Technically, this usually looks like setting it for non-renewal so you don’t have to keep paying for it. After the renewal date has passed, your website will officially be “gone” if you try to navigate to it in a web browser.
• Update it to reflect the transition. This will affect your contact page and your homepage at least. Your update here could be as simple as a message redirecting existing clients and new prospects to contact the new buyer, or let them know that the business is closing and is no longer taking on new clients.

Caveat: If your Web Hosting is bundled with your Domain, the website will be up for as long as your Domain is still yours.

Are you still serving clients?

If you’re still serving clients – and closing the business through attrition – you’ll probably want to keep the website up for at least as long as clients need it. Examples of this include going to your website for payment or scheduling links, or accessing resources like online courses or handouts.

It’s up to you when you want to update the website to let folks know you’re no longer accepting new clients (as with a piecemeal buyout) and when you’ll just take it off your books and let it go.

Make a Backup Before It’s Gone

Once Web Hosting is cancelled, you’ll lose access to all of the files you had stored there and they’ll be deleted from the server. If there’s anything here you want to keep – for whatever reason – you’ll need to make your own backup.

What this process looks like is determined in part by your provider and in part by whether the business is using WordPress or another technology. Your provider might be able to help you with specific export/download instructions.

At its most brute force – and as a last resort – this looks like making sure you have a downloaded copy of all PDFs and other resources, and creating screenshots or saving to PDF each of the individual web pages you’d like to keep a copy of. (Seriously, though, try to find another way.)

How to move away from your business Email (without losing important information)

In terms of moving away from the business email account… What this looks like depends on whether you’re phasing out a single email account as part of a handover or whether you’re closing down the entire business for good. Still, many of the considerations and steps will be the same.

If you have multiple email accounts for the business, such as the general “info” or “hello” account as well as person-specific emails, you’ll want to make sure you’ve done these checks with each. The person-specific emails will probably be the most complex, though.

Separating Personal and Business Email

In an ideal world, business email accounts are used just for business matters. In reality, that’s rarely the case. The ramification of this is that you’ll need to migrate some people and accounts (e.g., your restaurant rewards program) to another email address.

If you already have a personal email address, consider whether you want these things to go there from now on, or whether you want to create an additional free email (e.g., Proton, Outlook without a subscription) that you’ll move relevant things to. Make this decision ASAP.

Don’t underestimate how long this might take you.

Rewards Programs and Other Personal Online Accounts/Memberships

For all personal accounts that you want to keep (e.g., restaurant rewards programs, the library, warehouse clubs), go through and start moving those over to your personal email account so that you don’t suddenly lose access once the business email account is gone.

Updating Social Accounts

If you have a corporate profile page on a platform like LinkedIn, that will probably be deactivated/deleted in line with how you’re handling final communications with clients.

For your personal profile, you need to make sure that you transition this to your personal email instead of your business email.

I would make these changes ASAP.

Changing Your LinkedIn Email Address

As a first step, you can add in your personal email as a secondary for your account. Here’s how (accurate as of April 2026, with the interface and settings subject to change):

• Under Settings & Privacy, select Sign in & security.
• Under email addresses, enter your personal email as the secondary. (This is where you’ll come back to so you make it the primary when the time comes.)
• Back under Settings & Privacy, select Visibility.
• Under Who can see or download your email address, change that to Only visible to me (for your personal email especially).
• There’s also a Visibility section for Profile discovery using email address, which you can verify/set as you see fit.

Eventually – and before you lose access to your business email – you’ll remove the business email from this account entirely.

People and Personal Relationships

Sometimes there are colleagues or other contacts who have become personal friends, and other times it’s personal friends who have used your work email all along.

It’s time to let them know you’re moving to another email address as part of this transition. Be careful to only respond to them from your personal email from now on so that they migrate over as needed.

Shared Information

Sometimes the things associated with your email might actually be something that’s shared, like house insurance for your personal residence. In these cases, consider whether the email account this should transition to should still be to your personal email only or to a setup that’s more shared (e.g., a family account).

Phasing Yourself Out of the Business Email Chain

Some of the decisions you’ll make here will depend on what makes business/legal sense.

Client Relationships

You probably want to keep a running list of folks/accounts that have passed through your business email so you can easily track that they’ve been dealt with, and what else might still be outstanding. You can do this in a spreadsheet, using an exported contact list as a starting point. If you haven’t added folks to your email’s contact list, you might need to create this list manually as you work through old emails and email tags/folders.

Part of this is getting really clear about the contacts/accounts you needed just for the business versus the contacts/accounts you want to hold on to for other purposes (e.g., personal reasons).

For clients, this will usually entail a standard “thanks for your business over the years … closing down” type of email to close out those relationships. If they’ve been passed to another company, you’d add a line like “contact buyer if you have further needs” and then you can list these folks as ‘passed to buyer’ (or just checked off as ‘notified’) on your list.

Historical Records and Business Need

There are some email communications you might need to hold on to for legal or other reasons. For this, you can consider printed records. You can also consider making a digital backup/export of your emails. (In Microsoft Outlook, this will create a .pst file that you’ll need to import back into a desktop version of Outlook in order to view those emails. Google Workspace/Gmail and other email providers should also have export functionality.)

An Important Data Consideration: If your email contains proprietary or confidential information, as is common with business communications, consider whether this information should be deleted before you create your backup file. As a rule of thumb, if you no longer have a “business need” for that information, you need to let it go; this is a key part of general confidentiality agreements between the company and its clients, and is probably worth consulting a legal or compliance advisor if you’re unsure here.

Don’t forget your business phone number

It’s not uncommon for owners to have used their personal cell phone numbers for the business, and now that number is everywhere: the website, marketing materials, business cards, etc. This is your chance to decide whether to get a new phone number for yourself – including migrating personal contacts and accounts as needed – or how to transition yourself out of business use of that phone number.

Keeping the Number for Yourself

This could be complex, and it could be as simple as recording a new voicemail message that assumes all callers are business-related, thanks them for their business, and then either directs people to the new buyer or notifies them that the business has closed. (Your friends and family are likely already used to getting the business voicemail at this point, so there’s no need to include them specifically in the voicemail message.) Eventually, you’ll record a final voicemail message that’s for personal use only.

Migrating to Another Phone Number

If you decide to get a new phone number – and leave the business phone number with the business – you’ll need to transition out of the phone number the same way you transition out of a business email. Examples of things to look for here include:

• rewards and other programs associated with this phone number,
• people you want to stay in contact with (and who you’ll need to notify of your new number, so they can update you in their contacts), and
• places where you’ve used this number of 2-step verification (e.g., banks).

More than one phone number?

If you have other phone numbers that go only to the business, start making a list of those so you can shut them down appropriately.

Final Thoughts

To keep this process working smoothly, be sure to:

• Keep deadlines top of mind, including upcoming renewal dates for your website (Web Hosting), Email account(s), and Domain. Set calendar reminders to make sure you don’t overlook a key decision moment (and to help light a fire under your butt if you lose track of things you want to cancel before you pay for another renewal).
• Set some rules for what’s important to keep and what’s not. As you transition through the business shutdown, you may find that emails, web resources, and other information feel less important to you than they did at the beginning of the process. These rules will help make sure that nothing gets lost in the process.
• Integrate these plans with the rest of your wind-down plan, so that the infrastructure scales back when you’re ready – but not before. Your Email, Web Hosting, and Domain have supported a lot of your business over the years, so they might be more integrated than you initially expect, especially as you start to make other lists of things that need to be closed out as part of the business shutdown.

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Disclaimer: This content is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute professional, legal, financial, or other advice specific to your situation. The applicability of these ideas has to be evaluated within your own context.

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If you’re in this situation and want a thought partner on a wind-down plan, our 1-to-1 Advisory sessions might be just what you’re looking for.