First, audit what you have been buying
Before moving anywhere, pull the last three months of placements from your current provider and check them cold. Click every URL: is the page still live, is the link still present, and is the site a real publication with an audience, or a template blog that exists only to host links? Look at whether the same handful of domains keep recurring across different clients, which is the classic signature of inventory being resold rather than placements being earned.
This audit matters whatever you decide. If the links hold up, you have a quality baseline to hold the next provider to. If they do not, you know which client profiles may need remedial attention, and you have your business case for moving.
Check the paperwork before the courtship
Read your current agreement for notice periods, minimum terms and anything covering data or reporting access after termination, then serve notice with the overlap in mind rather than on impulse. Ask the outgoing provider for a final export of all placements per client, because reconstructing that history later is miserable.
Interrogate the incoming provider with the audit in hand. Ask where links actually come from and how, what happens when a placement is removed, whether campaigns are separated per client, and who owns the client relationship on paper. Any provider worth using answers those in writing without flinching. Our answers are on the how it works and FAQ pages.
The overlap month, client by client
The clean pattern is one month of overlap: the outgoing provider finishes their final cycle while the new campaigns start, so no client experiences a gap in placements or reporting. Migrate clients in waves rather than all at once, starting with the accounts where the relationship is strongest and the brief is simplest.
On our side, a new client campaign needs a short brief and produces first placements typically inside two to three weeks, so a wave started at the beginning of a month reports normally at the end of it. Your clients see a report in the same rhythm they always have, under the same brand they always have: yours.
What to tell clients, if anything
Under a white label arrangement there is usually nothing to announce, because the deliverable and the brand stay the same while the engine underneath changes. If a client has direct visibility of your supply chain, keep it simple and truthful: you have upgraded your fulfilment partner to improve placement quality, and here is the first report from the new setup.
What you should expect to change is the quality conversation. Reports listing live URLs on real publications, with authority ranges shown per placement, tend to end the awkward client questions that prompted the switch in the first place.