Who actually owns your website

You paid for a website. It works, it looks good, customers open it.

Whether you own it is a separate question — and the answer rarely surfaces in time. It usually appears at the worst possible moment: when you decide to change agencies, move the site, or simply add something, and find that you cannot.

Not because anyone is deliberately cheating you. More often it is carelessness: it was never agreed, nobody asked, and everything stayed wherever it was most convenient to put it.

Below are the five things that should be in your name, and how to check each one without asking anybody.

1. The domain

This is the most important and the most commonly overlooked.

The domain is your address. If it is registered in the name of the company that built your site, you own nothing — you are renting an address somebody else holds. Change supplier, and you lose the address your customers know you by.

The check: do not look at who built the site. Try to log in to the registrar account yourself — wherever the domain is registered. If you have no login of your own, the domain is not under your control.

Public ownership lookups often do not help, because most registrars now hide the holder's details. Logging in to the account is the real test.

2. The hosting

The same thing, but for where the site actually lives.

This one is slightly less severe: hosting is easier to move than a domain. But without access you cannot take a copy of the site or move it anywhere else without going through somebody.

The check: do you have login details for the hosting control panel? Can you download an archive of the files and the database without having to ask for it?

3. The code

If the site was built to order, the source code is something you paid for. It should be with you — not as a promise, but as files you hold.

The check: do you have a copy of the code somewhere of your own — in a Git repository in your name, or at least as an archive? If the answer is "the agency has it", the code is not yours in practice, whatever the paperwork says.

There is a second question here that few people ask: the rights. You may well have the files while the contract says nowhere that copyright passes to you. In that case you hold something that is not legally yours.

4. Access to the data

Google Analytics, Google Search Console, the advertising accounts, the email on your domain.

These look like small details until you need them. Your traffic data is the history of your business — if the account is in someone else's name, that history stays with them when you part ways.

The check: log in to Analytics and Search Console with your own account. If you cannot, they are not yours. If you can but you are only a "viewer", they are still not yours — you need to be the owner.

5. The content

The text, the photographs, the logo.

Photographs are the most frequent problem. If they were bought from a stock library, the licence may be in the agency's name and may not transfer. If they were downloaded from somewhere for free, it is worse — one day you may receive a letter demanding compensation.

The check: do you know where every image on your site came from, and whose name the licence is in? If not, ask for a list.

Red flags in a quote

A few phrases sound harmless and mean the opposite:

"We will purchase the domain."

It will be theirs. The right way is to buy it in your name, or transfer it to you immediately afterwards.

"Rights to the files remain with us."

You paid for use, not for ownership.

"Hosting is included in the monthly fee."

Not a problem in itself, but ask what happens if you stop paying: does the site go down that same day, or do you get a copy?

"We will give you access when you need it."

Access is either yours from day one, or it is not yours.

What the contract should say

It does not need to be long. Four sentences will do:

1. The domain is registered in the client's name.
2. Copyright in the code and design passes to the client on final payment.
3. The client has access to the code repository from the start of the work.
4. On completion the supplier hands over a full archive: code, database, and a list of every account.

A company that works honestly will sign this without hesitation. A company that resists has told you everything you need to know.

How we handle it

We are writing this knowing it works against our own interest — a company that holds your domain has a client for life.

But a client who stays because they cannot leave is not a happy client. They are a hostage, and sooner or later they work that out.

So with us, access to the code repository is yours from day one, not at the end. You see what is happening while it happens. On final payment full rights pass to you, and you can continue with whoever you choose — including somebody else.

If you are already in this position

It is not lost.

Domains can be transferred — the procedure is standard, and a supplier has no grounds to refuse if you were the one paying for it. Request the transfer in writing, by email, so there is a record.

Hosting can be moved. Code is usually handed over without argument if you simply ask.

The hardest thing to recover is lost history in Analytics, so start there: create your own account today, even if you change nothing else. The data collected from tomorrow onwards will be yours.

If you are not sure what you actually own, get in touch. We will go through it with you and tell you what is missing — whether or not the work ends up being ours.