The short answer, before all the rest
If you switch automation supplier, what you are left with is exactly what the contract says, no more and no less. And if the contract says nothing on the point, the honest answer is that nothing is guaranteed to you. Not because anyone is being unkind, it's simply how it works
So the question doesn't get asked afterwards, once the relationship has already cooled. It gets asked before you sign, while you still hold all the bargaining power you will ever have
Someone who lets you ask it and answers calmly, maybe pulling out the contract and pointing at the clause, is telling you they have already thought about the day you leave. Someone who stiffens up, changes the subject, tells you not to worry because we're all serious people here, is handing you valuable information without meaning to
Trust is a fine thing, but it isn't a document. And when a relationship ends badly, nobody ever remembers a spoken promise the same way
The four things to put down in writing
Start with the work itself, meaning who owns the automation built for your company. Then what happens to that work the day the relationship closes, on what timescale and in what form
Then there are the rules written inside the automation, and that's the part with the real value. Inside it sit your checks, your exceptions, the exact way your company works. That knowledge came out of your process, even if somebody else put it into code
Third, the documentation. Whether you keep a readable document that explains what the system does, step by step, so that another supplier can make sense of it without asking you to start over
And finally the way out, with how much notice the contract ends, what keeps running while you move to something else, how you avoid standing still halfway across. Because the real risk when you switch automation supplier isn't losing the code. It's going without the work for a while, with all of it landing back on your people
How this stands with Muffin Suite
Muffin Suite works on a monthly fee agreed before the project starts. The term, the exit conditions and what you keep are set out in the contract for each individual project
I'd rather say it openly than write a vague promise here that then doesn't match what you sign. If you want to see how the fee and the relationship are set up, read the Subscription page. For the rest, the right place to discuss it is before the signature
And if you're asking because working with a very small outfit gives you some doubt, that's a fair doubt. I go into it at length in the guide on working with a small company