Most business owners discover what they do and do not own at the worst possible moment: when a developer disappears, an agency relationship ends, or an invoice arrives for something they thought was already theirs.
None of this is complicated once it is laid out. This article walks through the five things that make up a website, who should hold each one, and the questions worth asking any provider — including us.
If your website vanished tomorrow, whose name is on everything needed to bring it back?
- 01DomainYour business, always
- 02HostingYou, or managed for you with a documented handover
- 03The website itselfSet out in the contract — use, modify, move
- 04Content and dataUnambiguously yours
- 05Accounts and accessOwned by the business, access granted to people
Your domain name
The domain is your address on the internet — yourbusiness.com — and it is the single most important thing to own outright. If someone else registers it in their name, they control it, whatever the goodwill between you.
The domain should be registered in your business's name, in a registrar account you control, with the renewal billed to your card. A developer or agency can be given access to manage its settings, but access is not the same as ownership.
Hosting
Hosting is the computer your website runs on, rented monthly or yearly. Unlike your domain, there are two legitimate ways to arrange it:
- You hold the hosting account. You pay the provider directly and grant your developer access. Maximum independence, slightly more administration.
- Your developer manages hosting for you. Simpler day to day, and perfectly reasonable — provided the arrangement is documented and there is a clear handover process if you part ways.
Neither is wrong. What matters is that the arrangement is deliberate, written down and reversible. Managed hosting is only a problem when it quietly becomes a form of lock-in.
The website itself
The design and code of your website is intellectual property, and your contract should say plainly what happens to it. The healthy arrangement for most projects: once the project is paid for, you have the right to use, modify and move the work.
Platform websites add a wrinkle: a Webflow site lives inside Webflow, a Shopify theme belongs to your Shopify account, and WordPress themes may carry their own licences. A good provider will explain exactly which parts of your build are portable before the project starts, not after it ends. If you are still choosing a platform, WordPress vs Webflow vs a custom website covers this from the other direction, and the custom website design and development page explains how ownership is handled inside a project.
Your content and data
Text, photography, customer enquiries, order history, analytics — these are business records, and they are unambiguously yours. Two practical checks: analytics and search accounts should be created under a business-owned login (with your developer added as a user, not the owner), and you should know how to export your data — enquiries, orders, content — without asking anyone's permission.
Accounts and access
Websites accumulate accounts: registrar, hosting, content management, analytics, email services, payment providers. The pattern that keeps you safe is simple — accounts that represent the business belong to the business, and the people who work on your website are granted access with their own logins.
Keep a simple, current list of every account, who owns it and who has access. It takes twenty minutes and turns a potential crisis into an administrative task.
Questions to ask any provider
- In whose name will the domain be registered?
- Who holds the hosting account, and what does handover look like if we stop working together?
- Once the project is paid for, what can I do with the design and code?
- Which parts of this build are portable, and which are tied to a platform?
- Will analytics and search accounts be created under our business login?
A trustworthy provider will answer all five without flinching. Our own answers are on the about page: your assets stay yours, care plans are optional, and there is always a clear way to take everything in-house. If the problem is an existing site with no accountable owner, see website maintenance and support. If the answers reveal a site you cannot safely move or extend, that is often where a website redesign starts.