There's no rival plugin to compare against — the real competitor is the document you assemble by hand every time a client arrives or leaves. Here's the honest breakdown, including where hand-writing genuinely wins.
The DIY doc is prose: whatever the person writing it remembered, in whatever structure they invented that afternoon, accurate as of the moment the screenshots were taken. WP Site Handover Pack (this site) is instrumentation: it reads the live site — every plugin including must-use and drop-ins, themes, users, post types, taxonomies, menus, forms, cron tasks, recent setting changes — and writes the same eleven-section, branded document every time. Memory versus measurement.
| Feature | WP Site Handover Pack | DIY doc + screenshots |
|---|---|---|
| Time per handover | ✓ Minutes | ✗ Hours, unbudgeted |
| Site overview (versions, URLs, environment) | ✓ Automatic | ◐ If remembered |
| Plugins incl. must-use & drop-ins | ✓ All of them, with versions | ✗ Screenshot misses mu-plugins |
| Users & access audit | ✓ Roles and reach | ◐ Usually skipped |
| Content structure (CPTs, taxonomies, counts) | ✓ | ✗ Invisible in screenshots |
| Menus & forms inventory | ✓ | ◐ Sometimes |
| Scheduled tasks (WP-Cron) | ✓ The section nobody writes by hand | ✗ Never |
| Recent setting changes | ✓ Logged and included | ✗ |
| Prioritised recommendations | ✓ Generated and ranked | ◐ Depends on the author's evening |
| Branding & personal cover note | ✓ Logo, colour, client name, note | ✓ Fully yours |
| Free-form narrative, history, screenshots | ✗ Cover note only | ✓ The DIY doc's real strength |
| Consistency across clients & staff | ✓ Same eleven sections, every time | ✗ Author-dependent |
| Still accurate next quarter | ✓ Regenerate in one click | ✗ Rewrite it |
| Output | Print-ready A4 PDF or portable HTML | Whatever the doc exports |
| Cost | From $49/yr · $299 lifetime | Your hourly rate × every handover |
The handover is mostly story: years of context, political history, "don't touch the checkout, here's why" narrative. Prose is the right tool for that — genuinely. Write it well, and staple the pack to the back as the factual appendix.
The handover is mostly facts that must be right: what's installed, who has access, what runs on a schedule, what changed recently, and what to do next. You'd rather generate that in a minute, branded, identical for every client — and regenerate it fresh whenever anyone asks. That's us.
Spotted something unfair or out of date? Tell us and we'll fix it.