Who owns your website

"Do I own my website" sounds like one question. It is five, and a business can own four of them and still be stuck.

Most lock-in is not malice. It is a studio that registered the domain on its own account because that was quicker, or a platform that cannot export what you built in it. The effect on you is the same either way, so it is worth checking before it matters.

The five things

1. The domain name

The address itself. This is the one that matters most, because whoever controls it controls your email as well as your website. If it is registered to your agency rather than to you, moving away means asking their permission.

You can check this yourself in a minute. Look up your domain on any WHOIS service and see whose name and email are on the registrant record. If the answer is not you or your company, ask for it to be transferred, and do that while everyone is still friendly.

2. The hosting

The server the site runs on. Ideally the account is in your name and you pay for it directly, even if somebody else manages it. Being hosted inside a reseller account you have no login to is workable right up until the day it is not.

3. The code

The actual files. Ask whether you get them, in what form, and whether anything in the build is licensed rather than owned. A site assembled from a proprietary page builder may be perfectly good and still be impossible to hand to anyone else intact.

4. The accounts and logins

Analytics, the content editor, the payment provider, the email sending service, any API keys. These accumulate quietly during a build and are the most commonly forgotten item at handover. A list of them, with who owns each, is worth asking for in writing.

5. The DNS

The settings that point your domain at your hosting and your email at your inbox. This is the least visible of the five and causes the most damage when it goes wrong, because it is what breaks company email rather than just the website.

How lock-in usually happens

• The domain was registered by the agency. Common, rarely deliberate, and easy to fix early.
• The site is built on something that cannot be exported. You can move the content but not the site.
• Support is compulsory. The build was cheap because the monthly fee is where the money is, and leaving means losing the site.
• Nobody wrote anything down. No handover document, no list of accounts, and the person who knew has left.

How we do it

You keep the domain, the hosting, the code, the accounts and the key logins. There is no lock-in, and it is all confirmed in writing at handover.

Support after launch is optional and never forced. You can run the site yourself, come back when you want something changed, or keep us on for hosting, updates, backups and monitoring. Choosing none of those does not cost you the website.

This is not generosity. A studio that has to trap clients to keep them has a retention problem it is solving in the wrong place.

What to ask before you sign

• Whose name will the domain be registered in?
• Will I have my own hosting account, or sit inside yours?
• Do I get the source code, and is any part of it licensed rather than mine?
• Will I get a written list of every account and login created for this project?
• If I stop paying for support, what stops working?
• If I move to another studio next year, what exactly do you hand over?

Any studio worth hiring will answer all six without hesitating. The hesitation is the answer.

Ask us anything