If you’re considering leaving Scorpion, the most important thing to understand before you cancel is what you actually own. The website they built for you, the content on it, your Google Ads campaigns, your campaign history: these may not be yours when you leave. Before you do anything else, you need to know where you stand.
This post walks through what Scorpion sells, what customers commonly report happens when they leave, and what to check before you make a move.
What Scorpion Actually Sells
Scorpion is a digital marketing company primarily serving home services contractors (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, pest control), law firms, and healthcare practices. Their model is a bundled monthly retainer that combines website design and hosting, search engine optimization, paid advertising management, and access to their proprietary platform.
The bundled approach is worth understanding because it affects what happens when you leave. When your website, SEO, and ads are managed as a single package by one vendor, untangling them is more complicated than canceling a standalone service.
Scorpion does not publish pricing on their website. Rates are discussed during the sales process. Reviews from customers mention contracts of significant length and substantial monthly costs, though individual situations vary. I don’t have access to their standard contract terms. That’s itself something to pay attention to, since any vendor that doesn’t publish contract terms publicly requires you to ask specific questions before signing.
The Ownership Question: What Do You Actually Own?
This is the most important section of this post. Before you cancel anything, you need answers to four specific questions.
1. Who owns your domain?
Your domain name (yourcompanyname.com) should belong to you, registered in your name, with you having login access to the registrar account. Log into your registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, or wherever it’s registered) and confirm you have owner-level access. If you can’t log in, or if the account is registered to Scorpion, that’s a problem to solve before you cancel.
A domain you don’t control is a business-critical asset held by a third party. Resolve this first.
2. Do you have owner access to your Google Business Profile?
There’s a difference between being a manager on a Google Business Profile and being the owner. If Scorpion set up your GBP, they may be the owner and you may only have manager access, or no access at all. Log into Google Business Profile and check your role.
If you don’t have owner access, request a transfer before you give notice. Once you’ve canceled, getting cooperation for a transfer becomes harder.
3. Do you have direct access to your Google Ads account?
If Scorpion runs your paid advertising, there’s a question of whether your campaigns live in a Google Ads account you own, or in a Scorpion-managed account. These are very different situations.
If the account belongs to you and Scorpion has access as an agency manager, you keep the account and its history when you leave. You can revoke their access and take over or bring in a new manager.
If the campaigns live in Scorpion’s account, the history (conversion data, audience lists, bid history, quality scores) typically stays with the account. Starting fresh means you lose that accumulated data and pay more per click while the new account establishes itself.
Multiple Scorpion customers have reported on review platforms that they lost access to their Google Ads campaigns and history when they ended their contract. I can’t verify Scorpion’s standard contract terms because they aren’t published publicly, but this is reported consistently enough that it’s worth asking directly and getting a clear answer in writing before you cancel.
4. Who owns the website and its content?
This is the most commonly reported issue. On Trustpilot, multiple Scorpion customers state that the website they paid to have built remained Scorpion’s property when they left. Several describe losing access to the website entirely upon cancellation.
Scorpion does not publish any ownership policy on their website. Their publicly available legal documents (privacy policy, acceptable use policy) don’t address who owns the website or content created under a client contract. Whatever the terms are, they’re in the private client services agreement, which you should read before you cancel.
Specifically, look for language about:
- Who owns the website design and code
- Who owns the written content (service pages, blog posts)
- Who owns images and other media produced under the contract
- What you’re entitled to receive at the end of the contract
If the website is Scorpion’s property, you may need to rebuild from scratch when you leave. That’s not the end of the world, but it’s important to know so you can plan accordingly and not make a decision based on an asset you don’t actually own.
What the Exit Process Looks Like
Going in clear-eyed about what’s likely to happen makes the transition less disruptive.
If you don’t own the website: You’ll need a new site built. Plan for a period where you’re operating without your current web presence, or negotiate a transition timeline before you cancel. Getting a new site built before you formally give notice is the cleanest approach.
Your SEO rankings will fluctuate. Any time you change websites, there’s a period of adjustment. Google is re-evaluating the new site. If you’re moving to a new domain (or a site with different content and structure), you may see a temporary drop in organic rankings. This typically recovers within a few months if the new site is well-built and the fundamentals are solid. It’s normal, not catastrophic.
Your paid search campaigns may need to be rebuilt. If you’re losing your Ads account history, you’ll restart without the conversion data and audience signals the old account had. Expect higher costs per lead while the new account gains traction, and set expectations accordingly.
Contractor requirements in your contract. Read your cancellation terms. There may be a required notice period or early termination provisions. Know what you’re agreeing to before you act.
None of this is meant to be discouraging. Businesses switch vendors all the time and come out ahead. The goal is to make an informed decision rather than discovering these things after you’ve already given notice.
What to Look for in a Replacement
Once you’ve sorted out what you own and what you’re rebuilding, here’s what I’d focus on in a replacement vendor or developer.
You own everything from day one. Any site built for you should be yours: the domain, the code, the content, all of it. You should be able to take those files and move to a different host at any time without asking permission or paying a ransom. This should be in writing before any work starts.
No long-term contract required. A developer who does good work doesn’t need to lock you into a multi-year contract. A project engagement has a clear scope and timeline. Ongoing maintenance or SEO work should be month-to-month. If a vendor needs a 12-24 month commitment to make the economics work, ask yourself why.
Transparency about what’s actually being done. One of the consistent complaints about bundled digital marketing packages is that clients don’t know what work is actually happening each month. You should be able to see, in plain terms, what was done, what it cost, and what it produced. Not a dashboard that aggregates metrics, but actual work performed and actual results.
One point of contact who knows your business. When something needs to be updated on your site, you should be able to reach someone who knows your business, can make the change promptly, and can explain the reasoning behind recommendations. This is different from submitting a ticket to a support queue staffed by people who have never seen your site before.
A site built for you, not reused from a template. This matters for both quality and SEO. A site built from a standard template that’s been used for dozens of similar contractors in your industry will look like every other site in the category. A custom site reflects your specific services, service area, and differentiation, which is the only thing that actually makes someone pick you over the next result in Google.
What a Custom Website Build Covers
For contractors across Washington state, a new site built from scratch typically covers:
- A design built around your brand, not a category template
- Pages written specifically for your services and service area (which matters for local search)
- Google Business Profile optimization if needed
- Basic technical SEO: site speed, mobile performance, structured data, sitemap
- Contact forms that actually work and notify you promptly
- You own everything: files, domain, hosting account
If you previously had SEO content or paid search running, that’s a separate conversation depending on what you’re starting with and what your goals are.
The build time for a standard contractor site is typically a few weeks from kickoff to launch. Long enough to get it right, short enough that you’re not in limbo for months.
Getting Started
If you’re actively evaluating your options and want to talk through what a transition looks like for your specific situation, I’m happy to have that conversation without any pressure. I can tell you honestly whether a rebuild makes sense, what to expect on the SEO side, and what a project would involve.
I work with businesses across Washington and don’t have minimum revenue thresholds or territory restrictions. If you’re a 5-truck operation in Yakima or a solo attorney in Vancouver, we’re good to go.
Contact me here and I’ll follow up within one business day.