The escrow copy lives on the client's own metal

Week one of the engagement, the client rents a $29 box into a pool they own, and invites you in. You copy the project container onto it, and a cron line syncs the copy every night: incremental, minutes, only the changes move.

From then on, the client holds a running duplicate of their own project, on hardware only they pay for, in an account only they control. If you vanish, they lose a vendor, not a website. The copy doesn't even need you to exist.

You put this slide in the pitch deck, because agencies compete against a fear older than any of them: the vendor who holds the work hostage.

The client has held the copy since week one.