Who owns your website?

Most people asking this are asking too late: the designer has gone quiet, or somebody left and took the logins. The answer is messier than expected, because a website is not one thing you either own or you don’t.

Who actually owns your website?

There is no single answer, because a website is four separate things: the domain name, the hosting account, the code, and the content. Each can be owned by a different person, and plenty of small businesses own only some of them without ever being told which.

That is why it is hard to answer over the phone. Someone can honestly say the site is yours while the domain renews every year in their name. Both are true at once.

Who owns the domain name?

Whoever is listed as the registrant, which is a matter of public record. The domain is your address, not your building, and it is the one people most often lose. A designer who registered it on their own card owns it until they move it, no matter who paid them to build the site.

This is the one to be careful about, because your domain is what your email runs on and what is printed on your van. Rebuilding a site takes weeks. Getting a domain back off someone who will not hand it over takes far longer, and sometimes fails.

Who owns the hosting account?

Whoever the account is registered to and whoever the bill goes to. Hosting is the space your site sits in. If you cannot log in and cannot see an invoice with your name on it, it is not your account, even if you are the one paying through somebody else.

Less frightening than the domain, because a site can be moved in a day or two if you have the files. But if the account is not yours and whoever holds it stops paying, your site goes off, and usually a customer notices first. Check your business email and Google profile the same way.

Who owns the code?

You should own the finished site once you have paid in full. What almost every web designer keeps is the reusable toolkit underneath, the shared pieces they use on every job, and you get a permanent licence to it as part of your site. That is normal, and worth understanding rather than being surprised by.

Think of it like a builder: the house is yours, the tools they reuse on the next job are theirs. Where it stops being normal is when a designer keeps the whole site. If it switches off when you stop paying, you are renting, not owning. That can be fair, but know which you are in.

Who owns the words and photos?

Anything you supplied stays yours. Words and photos your designer made for you should transfer when you pay, and stock images are usually licensed rather than owned, which means the licence needs to cover you and not only the designer who bought it.

Photography is where this bites. Ask what the photos can be used for: a website licence does not automatically cover a brochure or a billboard. And an image pulled off Google is a real risk sitting on your site that nobody has paid for.

How do you check who holds what right now?

You can check most of it yourself in ten minutes without asking anybody. Look up your domain on the public register, find which email address the renewal notices go to, check whose name is on the hosting invoice, and try logging in to each account without help from whoever set it up.

• Look up your domain on a public WHOIS search, or auDA for a .au, and see whose name is on it
• Find the renewal email. Whoever it reaches controls the domain, and if you have never had one, it is not you
• Check who the hosting invoice is addressed to, or whether you have seen one at all
• Try logging in to the domain, the hosting, your site admin and your Google profile with your own details
• Ask whether you could change your phone number on the site tomorrow if the person who built it stopped answering

Somebody else’s name on one of those does not mean you were cheated. It means you have found the thing worth sorting, and it is far easier while everyone is on good terms.

What should you ask a web designer before you hire them?

Ask direct questions and listen for direct answers. Anyone straight with you will answer these without hesitating and be glad you asked. Vagueness here is the most useful warning sign you will get, because it never improves once money has changed hands.

• Whose name is the domain registered in, and whose card pays for it?
• Will I have my own logins to everything, or do I go through you?
• If I leave in two years, what do I take with me and what do you keep?
• Do you charge to hand things over or move them elsewhere?
• What happens to my site if you stop trading, or if I cannot reach you?
• Is any of this in the agreement, or only what we have said?

That last one matters most. A good answer in conversation is worth little in eighteen months. Get it in writing before you pay a deposit.

The test is not whether they say you own it. It is whether they could leave tomorrow and take anything with them.

What does a proper handover look like?

A proper handover means there is nothing left to hand over. Every account is already in your name, you already have the logins, and you get a written document listing what you own and where it lives, plus a walkthrough of how to make simple changes.

• A written list of every account, what it is for, and that it is in your name
• Logins you have tested yourself, not a promise to send them later
• A walkthrough of how to update the ordinary things without paying anybody
• A straight answer on what happens if you move to another designer

How does Kindred handle it?

Everything goes in your name from day one. The domain, the hosting, the email and the analytics are set up on your own account with your own card, and I get added as a helper. Nothing needs transferring at the end because none of it was ever mine.

If you would rather not have another login, I can hold the domain and hosting while you are on a monthly plan, with conditions I will not bend on: the agreement says in writing that both are yours, I move them into your name free whenever you ask, including when you are leaving, and it is never a reason you cannot go.

When you pay the final invoice the site and its content are yours. The shared toolkit stays mine with a permanent licence to you, the same way any studio works, and I keep the right to show the work in my portfolio. If you leave, I will help you move the lot, free. That is in the terms because a business that needs to trap people is not one worth running.