Moving an advisor website involves more than a new design. Your firm needs to know which content can move, how existing URLs will be handled, who approves the replacement, and how you will publish afterward. Start that plan while the current site is still available.
This guide is general information, not legal, compliance, or investment advice. Your agreement with your current vendor governs what you can take, and your CCO or counsel makes every final call.
Firms worry about losing the writing. In practice the writing is the easiest thing to recover. The damage happens in the details nobody exports, because those details are what carried the search value.
An established article may have links and search visibility tied to its address. Keep that address where possible. If it changes, use a permanent redirect to the matching new page and check for broken links after launch. A redirect plan reduces avoidable disruption but does not guarantee unchanged rankings.
Original dates establish how long the firm has been writing about a subject. Exports frequently reset every article to the migration date, which makes a decade of work look like it was published in one afternoon. Capture the real dates before the export, not after.
Titles and meta descriptions were often written and refined over years. They rarely survive an automated export, and rewriting 30 of them under launch pressure produces worse ones than the originals.
Advisors leaving a platform often assume a custom site means emailing a developer for every update. That trade is not necessary, and for a firm whose content goes through review before it is posted, it is the wrong trade. See the managed publishing portal.
Advisors ask this when leaving a subscription platform such as FMG / Twenty Over Ten, Snappy Kraken / Advisor Websites, or WealthReach. This guide does not rank those vendors or describe their offerings, because each controls its own contract, export tools, and retention policy, and those change without notice. Ownership and export rights vary by vendor and by agreement, and the only reliable answer is the one in your own contract. Ask these in email so the answers exist in writing, and ask before you announce that you are leaving.
Ask separately about the written content, the design, and the page files. These are 3 different questions and vendors sometimes answer only the first. A vendor that answers all 3 plainly is not a problem. A vendor that will not is telling you something useful.
Request a test export while you are still a customer in good standing. A working export you have actually opened is worth more than a clause promising one. Check whether images come with it, or only the text that referenced them.
Some vendors delete account data on a schedule after termination. Find out the window before you start it, because a retention clock you did not know about is how firms lose the archive they assumed was safe.
If the vendor registered your domain, confirm who the registrant of record is and how a transfer works. The domain is the one asset that makes every other decision reversible, and it should be registered to the firm.
Hilpan Moxie Wealth Management is an SEC-registered investment adviser serving technology professionals. The firm had a real body of published writing and needed it to survive the move. The site went from first inquiry to live in 4 days.
| Item | What happened | How to verify it yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Existing articles | 29 migrated. The firm's published writing moved to the new site rather than being rewritten or dropped. | The articles are public on the live site, which is linked from the case study. |
| Article URLs | Preserved. Existing paths were carried across so accumulated search signal stayed attached to each article. | Open any article and compare the path to the one indexed before the move. |
| Publishing after launch | Portal delivered. The firm publishes updates directly instead of sending changes to a developer. | New posts appearing after the launch date are the observable proof. |
| Disclosures | Placed as the reviewer wrote them. Compliance-reviewed language was positioned exactly as supplied by the firm. | The disclosure pages are public on the live client site. |
| Public credit | Listed. The site carries a visible TMN Creative credit and appears on the verification center. | Check tmncreative.com/verify and follow the link to the live site. |
This is 1 checkable engagement, not a promise that every migration takes 4 days. Volume, export quality, and review schedule all change the timeline. Full detail is in the Hilpan Moxie case study.
Advisors affiliated with a broker-dealer, and RIAs with a formal review step, cannot simply publish a new site on a chosen date. The build has to produce something a reviewer can actually review.
A private staging URL with a change log gives the approved audience 1 stable version to review, instead of a moving target. Who may see it, and when, is set by your firm and your counsel.
On the Parks Wealth Partners build, every page was prepared, exported to PDF, and submitted for the broker-dealer's advertising review, and the site was resubmitted after changes. TMN did not connect the domain until the review clearance was forwarded. That is the broker-dealer's process, not an endorsement of TMN.
Cancelling a website platform does not end a firm's books and records obligations. Confirm with your CCO or compliance consultant what has to be retained, and where it will live, before the old account closes.
For what the SEC Marketing Rule and FINRA 2210 actually require on an advisor site, use the RIA website compliance guide. For a firm going independent, see the breakaway advisor guide.
That depends entirely on your agreement and on what the platform lets you export, so read the contract and test an export before you give notice. Articles you wrote are usually recoverable as text even when the export tool is limited. What is more often lost is the structure around them: the URLs, publication dates, titles, meta descriptions, and images. Capture all of it while the site is still live, because recovering it after the account closes is far harder.
Rankings can fluctuate while search engines recrawl and reindex a moved site. Preserve existing URLs where possible, or permanently redirect each changed URL to its relevant new page. Check redirects, canonical tags and indexing after launch. These steps reduce avoidable disruption, but they do not guarantee unchanged rankings.
Ownership varies by vendor and by contract, so the only reliable answer comes from your own agreement. Ask 3 specific questions in writing: do we own the written content, do we own the design and page files, and what exactly can we take with us if we leave. A vendor that answers those plainly is not a problem. A vendor that cannot is telling you something useful.
Yes, when the build includes a publishing path. Advisors leaving a platform often assume a custom site means emailing a developer for every update. TMN includes a client-owned CMS in a Full Site Rebuild or Custom Studio Build when needed, or provides the optional Managed Publishing Portal, so the firm publishes approved articles directly. The agreed workflow determines how your reviewers approve content before publication.
Generally no. Website hosting and the firm's books and records obligations are separate things, and cancelling a website platform does not end a retention duty. Confirm with your CCO or compliance consultant what has to be preserved and where it lives before the old account is closed, because some vendors delete account data after termination.
TMN publishes its prices. Website packages start at $2,250, a full site rebuild starts at $3,750, and a Custom Studio Build starts at $5,000. New RIA engagements include managed hosting and care at $100/month from launch, billed separately from the build. Scope and investment are confirmed in writing before work begins. See advisor website cost for the full comparison.
Your proposal identifies what is created for the firm, what is licensed, who controls each account, and what the handoff includes.
After full payment, ownership of the project-specific website code, approved copy and assets transfers as defined in the signed agreement. The handoff identifies the delivered files, published content and deployment information.
Confirm domain, hosting, repository and authentication access before building. Third-party software, fonts, images and services retain their own licenses. The optional Managed Publishing Portal's application and source remain TMN's while your published content is exportable. A client-owned CMS has its own agreed setup and provider dependencies.
Compare the included CMS and handoff options · Read the maintained portal's scope and ownership terms
If your provider has given a shutdown date, include it with the first inquiry. We assess feasibility against access, content rights and firm approvals before confirming a launch date.
Confirm rights to the copy, design, images and article library. Open a test export. Record current pages, important URLs and the old provider's notice and retention terms. Provider-licensed material may need replacement.
Confirm who controls the domain, DNS, analytics, search accounts and hosting. Coordinate website changes with your IT contact and preserve unrelated email records. Review the marketing and CRM tools you want to keep.
Prepare the agreed pages, content and redirect map. Your named reviewer approves the public copy and disclosures. Test the agreed forms, scheduling links and publishing path before the domain moves.
Check the live pages, redirects, inquiry delivery and indexing configuration. Hand over the agreed website files and access information. Confirm the firm's archive and retention arrangements before closing the old account.
Continuity depends on the current provider, available access and approvals. A migration cannot guarantee unchanged rankings or uninterrupted third-party services. Managed hosting and care starts at $100/month alongside new RIA builds. Optional publishing and additional services are quoted separately.
For a named vendor decision, use our FMG and Twenty Over Ten alternative guide or the Snappy Kraken and Advisor Websites comparison.
We review the website and content, confirm available access and export rights, and quote the replacement work. The plan identifies content to retain, URLs to preserve or redirect, publishing setup and firm review. Keep the existing service active until the cutover is ready.
A modern refresh can retain useful design and content when you have reuse rights. A website move does not automatically require replacing campaigns. We check supported connections, content licenses, forms and reviewer requirements before including them in the scope.
Send your current site, provider, approximate article count and any shutdown deadline. We will review what can move, what needs rebuilding, and a realistic sequence before you commit to the replacement.