How to switch GP surgery website providers without disrupting patients

Switching website providers is one of those things that sounds harder than it is. Practice managers tell us they've been thinking about it for two years and put it off four times. Usually because nobody has explained, in plain English, what the actual sequence of events looks like and how much of it lands on their desk.

So here it is. A real timeline — about 2 weeks of build, plus however long your MSW notice period takes to run down, written by someone who has run the switch with practices on every major UK provider. If you'd rather hand the whole thing to us, you'd be in good company — but it's still worth understanding what should happen, so you can hold whichever provider you pick accountable.

Why practices switch — and why they put it off

The four reasons I hear most often, in roughly the order of frequency:

• Renewal price increases that arrive in March with no warning.
• An NHS England benchmarking exercise that flagged compliance gaps the current platform can't easily fix.
• A CMS so dated or complicated that the practice manager has stopped trying to update the site.
• Welsh-language obligations the current provider can't meet (or is charging an arm and a leg for).

The reason they put it off is almost always the same: "we don't have time to manage the project". So our first job is to convince you that the project doesn't need much of your time. With a competent new provider, four hours of your time over four weeks is enough.

Before you start: the three things to check

1. Your current contract

Find your current contract and look for two things specifically: the notice period required to cancel, and whether there's an auto-renewal clause. Most NHS GP website contracts have a 30-day or 90-day notice period and auto-renew on a fixed anniversary. If you've just auto-renewed for another year, you can still onboard with a new provider — just plan go-live for the next renewal date.

2. Who owns your domain name

Open a terminal (or ask your dev-savvy patient or partner to) and run whois yourpractice.nhs.uk — or just check what shows up when you log in to your current provider's portal. There are three scenarios:

• Your domain is registered in the practice's name, at a registrar like 123-reg or GoDaddy. Great — you control it. Easy switch.
• Your domain is on the nhs.uk subdomain registry (most NHS England practices). Managed via NHS Digital — switch is admin-only.
• Your domain is registered in your current provider's name. This is a lock-in tactic. They have to transfer it on cancellation, but it can take pushing. Ask now, not later.

3. Inventory what's on your existing site

Open every page. Make a list — even a rough one — of every page you have, every embedded widget (eConsult, AccuRx, NHS App), every form, every PDF download, every news item. A new provider needs this to know what to migrate. Most of the time, this is 30 minutes of clicking around.

The four-week timeline

Week 1 — Start and content lock-in

Once you've signed up, the first week is about your new provider gathering everything they need. A 30-minute start-up call. The onboarding questionnaire (if it's ours, you can do this asynchronously). Migration of your existing content from the old site into the new system. A first round of clinical content review by one of our practising clinicians — finding and flagging anything that's misleading, missing or out of date.

Your time this week: 30 minutes for the start-up call. Done.

Week 2 — Design draft and your feedback

By end of week 2 you should have a designed mock-up of your new site. Two pages at minimum — the homepage and a service or information page. This is where you and your partners say what you do and don't like. Don't be shy. A good provider will revise. We do two free rounds of revisions and then a sign-off.

Your time this week: an hour with your partners to review and give feedback. The PM doesn't need to do this alone.

Week 3 — Build, integrate, and re-validate

Week 3 is heads-down work for your new provider. Every page built. Every patient-services link integrated. Every form connected to the right inbox. A full re-validation against the NHS England benchmarking tool (we cover that exercise in detail in our benchmarking guide). WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility audit. HIW or CQC alignment check.

Your time this week: review the staging URL when it's ready. Maybe 30 minutes.

Week 4 — Go-live and DNS cutover

The actual switch is anticlimactic. We notify your existing provider of cancellation in writing. We update the DNS records (with you confirming, in writing, that we have authority to do so). We monitor for the first 24 hours. We set up redirects from any old URLs that have changed. We re-check NHS benchmarking at 30 days post-launch.

Your time this week: a 15-minute confirmation call, a quick scan of the live site, and a "go" message. Done.

The technical bits a good provider handles for you

The list below is what we handle on every switch. If a provider you're considering doesn't do all of these, ask why.

• DNS migration. A/AAAA records, CNAME for www, MX records preserved so your email isn't disrupted, SPF and DKIM untouched. Low TTL set 48 hours before go-live to enable a fast rollback if needed.
• SSL certificate. Issued and auto-renewing before go-live. No "this site is not secure" warning, ever.
• 301 redirects. Every old URL that has a new equivalent gets a permanent redirect. This preserves your search rankings and means patients with bookmarks don't get a 404.
• Cancellation of the old provider. Written notice on your behalf, on the day of go-live. Confirmation captured in writing.
• Google Search Console. New site verified, sitemap submitted, change-of-address notified where applicable.
• Google Business Profile. Updated with the new URL and re-verified.
• 30-day monitoring. Daily for the first week, then weekly. Anything broken gets fixed without you having to ask.

What about patient comms?

Should you tell patients about the new website? In a word: no. Or rather, not directly. The whole point of a clean switch is that from the patient's perspective, the URL is the same and the site is just better. Anything that creates the impression of "change" — even positive change — generates avoidable phone calls to reception.

If you want to mention it, do so in your routine practice newsletter or PPG meeting, framed as "we've refreshed our website with improved compliance and accessibility". Don't email every patient. Don't put a banner on the homepage announcing it. Just make it good and let them notice.

Common pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

Pitfall: changing your domain at the same time as switching provider

Don't do this. Switch provider first, run the new site on the old domain for at least three months, then change the domain if you have to. Bundling both changes at once doubles the risk for no upside.

Pitfall: trusting your old provider to migrate content

Your existing provider is the wrong people to ask to help with the switch. They are losing your business — there's no upside for them in making it smooth. Always have your new provider extract content directly from the live site.

Pitfall: switching during your busiest week

Don't go live during a flu campaign, immediately before a CQC inspection, or in the first week of a new partner starting. The switch itself is low-risk, but you want headroom in case anything needs attention. Quiet weeks are best.

Pitfall: not auditing the new site before go-live

Spend 30 minutes on the staging URL before you sign off. Click every link. Submit every form. Check on a phone. If something doesn't work, you want to find it before the world does.

What to do next

If you've read this far, you have one of three questions to ask yourself:

1. "When does our current contract end?" Look it up today. Plan backwards from there.
2. "Is our current website even worth keeping the patients we have on it on?" Run our free compliance audit — five working days, plain-English report, no obligation.
3. "What would a switch actually cost us?" Look at our pricing page. We'll do a like-for-like quote against your current renewal.

Practice Digital is a small team of practising NHS doctors, nurses, a head pharmacist and experienced practice managers. We've overseen migrations away from every major UK GP website provider.