Stack transfer
Definition
Stack transfer is the movement of every technical and commercial account a business runs on, from domain and hosting to code repository, payment processor, email and third-party APIs, into the buyer's control. At $50k–$150k it is the practical work of ownership transfer, and it is where completion most often slows down.
Stack transfer is the movement of every technical and commercial account a business runs on, from domain and hosting to code repository, payment processor, email and third-party APIs, into the buyer's control. Ownership of a business is really ownership of that list.
At a $50,000 to $150,000 deal, the list is usually longer than either party expects. A typical micro-SaaS runs on twelve to twenty separate accounts once you count the domain registrar, DNS, hosting, database, error monitoring, analytics, transactional email, marketing email, payment processing, support desk, code hosting and whatever APIs the product calls. Each has its own transfer mechanism, its own timeline, and its own way of failing. The work is unglamorous and it is most of what completion actually consists of.
Where it bites
Payments and domains, almost every time. Payment processor accounts are generally tied to a legal identity and cannot simply be signed over, so the buyer opens their own and subscriptions are migrated across, which needs planning and customer communication. Domains can sit under a 60 day registrar lock after a recent change of contact details.
Neither is a problem if you know about it in advance. Both are a fortnight of awkwardness if you do not.
Worked example
A $115,000 transfer of a SaaS earning $38,000 a year. The inventory came to 16 accounts. Two were registered to a contractor who had stopped replying, one analytics property was tied to a personal email the seller had used since 2019, and the domain had been updated six weeks earlier, putting it inside a transfer lock.
Nothing there was fatal. It added eleven days to the handover, and a buyer who had budgeted two weeks spent five.
Build the inventory before you list. One spreadsheet, every account, who holds it, which email it is under, and how it moves. Sellers who hand that over on day one look like people who run a business properly, and buyers respond to that well before they ever say so.
Related: transferability, handover-period, operating-documentation
See what a business at this level is listed at.
Everything on sale between $50,000 and $150,000, on the same fields.