The case it was built for
A one-person agency. Forty client websites. One point of failure.
He builds and hosts websites for small businesses, on his own. For most of his clients the site isn't marketing — it's the thing that takes the bookings and the enquiries that pay their staff. Torchpass was designed around his situation, so it is the fairest one to show you.
The problem
Every client had quietly taken a bet on one person's health.
Registrar, host, DNS, certificates, the analytics, the form handler, the payment integration — all of it sat behind accounts in one name, secured with 2FA on one phone. That's normal for a solo agency. It's also a risk none of his clients had knowingly agreed to.
If he vanished tomorrow, nobody could renew a domain or reach a host. Nothing would break that day. It would break gradually, over the following weeks, as renewals came due — and each failure would land on a business with no idea who to call.
“My clients never signed up to depend on one person staying alive. Torchpass is how I stop that being their problem.”
Founder, independent web agency
What it looks like set up
Forty documents, one person who could confirm, nothing given out early.
Most of the work is writing down what he already knows. None of it involves handing anybody a password.
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01
One entry per client, one project per site
Acme Joinery, their domain, and the one line that matters most: what the site actually does for them. "Takes quote enquiries, about thirty a month, it's where most of their work comes from." That sentence is what turns a list of services into something a stranger can act on, and it is the thing nobody ever writes down.
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02
Tick what each site runs on
Duda for some, a private repository deployed to a host for others, a Medusa shop on another host, email through a sending service, and in every case a domain the client owns themselves. Who controls each one and who pays for it comes from the playbook, so he only corrects the ones that differ.
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03
Name one person who could answer
Not a committee. One person who would know — his partner, or his accountant. They get no client list, no domains and no logins, and no account to maintain. If he goes quiet long enough, they are asked one question, and saying "he's fine" costs nothing and stops everything.
What changed
Nothing, on any ordinary day. That's the point.
Nobody is handed a credential. No client gains access to anything they did not already have. This matters more than it sounds: the reason he charges a management fee is that his clients are not the ones who should be touching their own DNS, and a continuity plan that starts by giving them the keys would create the exact problem it claims to solve.
What he can do, and should do, is read the packs. Any client's, exactly as they would see it, at any time. That is where the real gaps turn up — the project never filled in, the client with no email address on file, the subscription he had forgotten was in his name rather than theirs. All fixable while he is here. None of them fixable afterwards.
Reading it yourself- Client sites depending on him
- 40+
- People who could take over today
- 0
- Clients who know what their site runs on
- Few
- Warning they would get
- None
- Access any client gains before then
- None
- Passwords Torchpass would hold
- None
If this is you
Agencies, freelancers, and anyone else holding the only set of keys.
The pattern is the same whether it's client websites, a SaaS with paying users, a practice with patient records, or a landlord with tenants. Other people's livelihoods run through accounts only you can open, and nobody has ever written down what happens next.
See the plans