Who owns your website?

Ask a business owner who owns their website and most say “I do. I paid for it.” Then we look, and the domain is registered to a designer who left the industry, the hosting is on someone’s personal account, and the site itself lives on a platform that does not allow taking it with you.

Ownership is not about who paid. It is about whose name is on the accounts. Here is how to check yours in ten minutes.

The four things to check

The domain. Look up your domain at a WHOIS lookup site, or check who receives the renewal emails. The registrant should be you or your company. Not your designer, not your old marketing agency, not an employee who left. The domain is the one asset you cannot rebuild. If someone else controls it, they control your web address, and your email.

The hosting. Whose account does the site live on? If it is your developer’s account, you have a landlord, not an asset. That can be fine while the relationship is good. It is a problem the day it is not.

The content. Who has the words and images? If your only copy of your site’s content is the live site itself, you do not have a copy. Exports, backups, and original files should exist somewhere you can reach.

The agreement. What does your contract say happens when you leave? Good agreements say it plainly: paid in full means you own the site, and departure means a clean handover. If there is no agreement, ownership is whatever the person holding the passwords decides.

Platform sites are a special case

On Squarespace, Wix, and similar builders, you own your content and your domain, but not the site itself. The site is a subscription. Stop paying and it disappears. You cannot export the design or move the site to another host. That is the trade: low cost, easy editing, and a site you rent rather than own.

For a young business, that trade is often right. For an established business, it is worth understanding what you are renting before you invest years of content and rankings into it.

What good ownership looks like

The domain registered in your name, at a registrar you can log into. Hosting on an account you control, or a written agreement that spells out the handover. Content and backups you can access. A contract that says the site is yours when it is paid for.

This is how I set up every client: your domain, your accounts, your site. My terms say it in writing. If we ever part ways, you take everything with you, and I help you do it.

Fix it before you need it

The time to check ownership is now, while everything is friendly. The worst time is during a dispute, a designer’s retirement, or a rebrand with a deadline.

If you check and find someone else’s name where yours should be, ask for a transfer. A professional will do it without drama. If they will not, that tells you what you needed to know.

Not sure what you would find? Book a call and I will walk through it with you. It takes twenty minutes to know exactly what you own.