The parts of a website
Ownership gets muddled because a website is several things owned in different places:
- the domain, your address, held at a registrar;
- the hosting, the account the website runs on;
- the files, the design and the words that make up the website;
- the logins to all of the above, and to things like your email and your Google Business Profile.
Each one needs your name on it, or a written promise of when it will be.
The domain: whose name is on it
Whoever the domain is registered to controls it. If it is registered to your web designer, they can point it somewhere else, let it lapse, or charge you to have it back. Ask whose name it is in, and ask for the registrar login.
With me, you buy the domain yourself, in your own name, and pay the registrar directly. It is about £10 a year. I never hold it.
The hosting: whose account
Hosting is the account that serves the website to visitors. With me, until the website is paid for, it runs on hosting in my account, pointed at your domain. Once it is paid for, I move it into an account in your name, and it costs nothing on a site like this.
The website itself
My terms say that when you have paid in full, ownership of the website, its design and the words I wrote for it passes to you, and I hand over every login in writing. After that it is yours outright: any developer can work on it and nothing is locked to me. You can also have the files as a zip.
To be straight about the rest: before you have confirmed an order and paid, the website and everything I wrote for it stay mine, so it cannot be copied or published while you decide. And I keep the right to reuse my general methods and code, the parts that are not specific to your business.
Email, and the accounts around the website
The website is not the only thing to check. Email on your domain, your Google Business Profile, Google Search Console and any booking or payment service linked to the site should be set up in your name, or with you as the owner, not only on your web designer’s account. If the person who set them up stops answering, you want to be able to log in without them.
Questions to ask any web designer
- Whose name will the domain be registered in?
- Will the hosting account be in my name, and when?
- Do I get the files, and in what form?
- Which logins will I be given, and when?
- Can another developer work on it without your permission?
- Is anything licensed rather than owned, such as a theme, a plugin or a page builder?
- What happens to the website if you stop trading, or if I stop paying you?
Get the answers in writing before you pay anything. Mine are in the terms, clauses 5 and 9, and on how it works.
If your old designer still holds it
Ask, in writing, for the domain to be moved into your name and for every login. If the website was built on something you cannot move, you may own your words and photographs but not the site itself, and rebuilding is often simpler than untangling it.
That is what happened with HERU. The agency that built the old site kept the rights to its design and code, so nothing could be carried over, and the new website was built clean from HERU’s own words, photographs and reports. You can read how HERU’s site was rebuilt.
