A website is four separate things
Most disputes about ownership happen because people think a website is one object. It is not. It is four, and you can own some and rent others without realising.
- The domain name. Your address. Rented annually from a registrar, but registered to a person or company. This is the one that matters most
- The hosting. The computer your site sits on. Always rented, by you or on your behalf
- The content. Your words, photos and logo. Usually yours, occasionally not
- The build. The code, theme or template. This is where the wording of your contract matters
You can lose access to a working website by losing control of any one of them.
"Is the domain registered in my name or yours?" Ask it in writing, before any money changes hands. Everything else is recoverable. A domain held by someone who has stopped replying is the one that genuinely traps people.
The domain: check this today
You can check who a domain is registered to without asking anyone. For a .co.uk address, use the Nominet WHOIS lookup. For .com and most others, use a general WHOIS service. Personal details are often hidden for privacy, but the registrant organisation usually is not.
If it lists your web designer's company rather than yours, you do not control your own address. That is not automatically sinister, plenty of designers register domains on behalf of clients as a convenience. It becomes a problem the day you want to move.
Ask to be made the registrant. A reasonable supplier will do it without fuss. Reluctance to transfer a domain you paid for tells you something useful.
Your content
Words and photographs you supplied are yours. Copy written for you is usually assigned to you on payment, but check, because "usually" is doing work in that sentence.
Stock photography is the common trap. Licences are often bought in the agency's name and do not transfer with the site. If you move, those images may have to come off. Worth asking which images are licensed and to whom.
The build itself
Here the answer genuinely depends on the arrangement, and all three of these are legitimate.
You paid a one off fee
Usually you own the resulting files, though the contract decides it rather than the invoice. Ask for the site files and database on completion. If a supplier will not hand over what you have bought outright, that is worth knowing early.
You are on a platform
With Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and similar, you own your content but you are licensing the platform. You cannot export the site and host it elsewhere in any meaningful way. That is not a scandal, it is the deal, but people are often surprised by it.
You pay monthly to an agency
This varies most, and it is where you should read carefully. Some providers hand over everything if you leave. Some hand over content but not the build. Some hand over nothing. All three exist and the difference only becomes visible at the point you want to go.
What a monthly plan actually means
We charge £20 a month, so treat this section as coming from an interested party.
The honest position is that a monthly model is a rental of the build and the service around it. Your domain, your content and your brand are yours. The site itself is maintained by the provider for as long as you are with them. That is the trade: no large sum up front, in exchange for an ongoing relationship.
The genuine risk is dependency. If your provider disappears, raises prices unreasonably or stops answering, you have a problem that someone who paid once and holds their own files does not have.
You manage that risk in three boring ways: keep the domain in your own name, know your notice period before you sign, and choose someone with reviews you can actually read. Do those and the exposure is small. Skip them and it is not.
If total ownership of every file matters more to you than cash flow, pay once and own it. That is a completely reasonable choice, and any provider who tells you otherwise is selling rather than advising.
Four questions to ask before you pay
- Is the domain registered in my name? If not, will you transfer it, and when?
- What happens if I leave? What comes with me: content, images, the build, nothing?
- What is the minimum term and notice period? Twelve months and twenty four months are both common. Get it in writing
- Who holds the hosting and email logins? You should be able to get them on request
Ask all four by email rather than on a call, so you have the answers in writing. Any decent supplier will answer plainly. Vague answers to simple questions are the actual warning sign, more than any particular business model.
If you want ours in writing, ask and we will send them before you commit to anything. If you are still weighing up how to pay for a site at all, we compared monthly against upfront over five years.