What Private Equity Firms Miss During Digital Due Diligence

Most private equity firms run thorough due diligence. Financial models get stress-tested. Legal agreements get reviewed line by line. Operational metrics are measured against industry benchmarks.

But there is an entire category of risk that rarely makes it onto the diligence checklist: digital assets.

Not the marketing performance metrics. Not the SEO audit. The operational layer underneath all of it. The domains, hosting accounts, admin credentials, vendor relationships, platform access, and renewal schedules that keep a portfolio company’s digital presence running day to day.

When this layer is overlooked during digital due diligence, private equity firms inherit problems that do not show up until after the deal closes.

What Digital Due Diligence Actually Means

Most firms associate “digital diligence” with evaluating a target’s marketing performance or technology stack. Those assessments matter, but they stop short of the question that creates the most post-close disruption: who actually owns and controls the digital systems this business depends on?

Digital due diligence in the context of private equity should include verifying ownership of every platform, login, vendor relationship, and recurring payment tied to the target company’s digital operations. That means domains, hosting, email platforms, analytics, ad accounts, CRM systems, social media profiles, payment processors, and every tool in between.

Without this layer of review, a firm may close a deal and discover that critical accounts are registered under a former employee’s personal email, that the domain auto-renewal is tied to a credit card that no longer exists, or that the marketing vendor who “handles everything” is the only person with admin access to Google Ads.

Where the Gaps Show Up

The most common digital asset gaps in private equity transactions tend to fall into a few predictable categories.

Domain and Hosting Ownership

A domain might be registered under a founder’s personal GoDaddy account. Hosting might be managed by a freelance developer who built the original site five years ago and has since moved on. In both cases, the company is operating on infrastructure it does not technically own or fully control. If that domain expires or the hosting provider changes terms, there is no clean recovery path without the original account holder.

Admin Access and Credential Gaps

It is common for platform credentials to live in one person’s browser, email, or memory. When that person leaves the company, the credentials leave with them. Google Analytics, Meta Business Suite, email marketing tools, and CRM platforms are frequently tied to individual users rather than company-owned accounts. Two-factor authentication tied to a former employee’s phone number can lock an entire team out of a critical system with no straightforward recovery.

Vendor Fragmentation Across the Portfolio

Each acquisition often brings its own set of vendors, platforms, rates, and contracts. A portfolio company with five brands might have five different agencies managing five different websites on five different platforms, each billing at different rates with different contract terms. Nobody has a consolidated view. Marketing teams spend more time coordinating vendors than executing campaigns.

Recurring Payments and Renewal Risk

Subscriptions and renewals tied to credit cards, individual accounts, or departed employees create silent risk. A domain renewal fails because the card on file expired. A SaaS tool subscription lapses because the person who set it up no longer works at the company. These are not dramatic events. They are small disruptions that compound into real cost and lost time.

Why This Gets Missed

The reason digital asset ownership falls through the cracks during due diligence is not carelessness. It is a structural gap.

Financial diligence teams are focused on revenue, margins, and projections. Legal teams are focused on contracts, IP, and compliance. IT teams, when involved, tend to focus on cybersecurity posture and infrastructure. None of these groups are typically tasked with asking who controls the company’s Google Ads account, where the domain is registered, or what happens to the website hosting if the current vendor relationship ends.

Digital assets sit in a gap between IT, marketing, and operations. No single department owns the full picture. And because the systems are “working” at the time of the deal, nobody thinks to ask what happens when something changes.

What It Costs When You Find Out Too Late

The cost of missed digital due diligence is rarely catastrophic on its own. It is cumulative. A stalled integration here. A few weeks of marketing downtime there. An emergency domain recovery that costs more in legal fees than the domain is worth. A portfolio company that cannot run paid ads for a month because the previous owner never transferred console access.

These are not hypothetical scenarios. They are patterns that repeat across deals, especially in mid-market transactions where the seller’s digital operations were managed informally or by a single person.

For firms acquiring multiple companies per year, these inefficiencies multiply. Each deal brings another set of scattered platforms, unknown vendors, and undocumented access. Without a system for identifying and organizing digital ownership during diligence, the post-close integration timeline stretches, costs increase, and marketing teams spend their time troubleshooting instead of generating revenue.

Building Digital Due Diligence Into Your Process

The fix is not complicated, but it does require making digital asset review a standard part of the diligence process rather than an afterthought.

That starts with mapping ownership. Every domain, hosting account, ad platform, CRM, email system, and third-party tool should be documented with clear answers to four questions: Who owns it? Who has access? What is the renewal or payment schedule? What happens to it during the transition?

This is what Digital Asset Protection™ was built for. Through the Ownership Mapping Framework™, every digital asset is identified, documented, and organized so firms have complete visibility before the deal closes and a clean integration path after.

For firms that want to go further, building Digital Continuity Management™ into the post-acquisition playbook means ongoing monitoring of renewals, access changes, and vendor relationships across the portfolio. It turns a one-time diligence exercise into a lasting operational advantage.

The Firms Getting This Right

The private equity firms that are getting ahead of this problem are not hiring more IT staff or adding another vendor to the pile. They are building digital asset review into their standard diligence workflow and partnering with a team that specializes in identifying, documenting, and managing the digital layer that traditional diligence misses.

That is what we do at Tree Ring Digital. We have supported 75+ transactions and currently manage digital operations for 14+ private equity firms and portfolio companies. We handle the digital due diligence that sits between IT and marketing so your integration teams can focus on value creation instead of chasing logins.

If your firm is acquiring companies and digital asset ownership is not part of your diligence checklist, that is the gap worth closing first.