Who owns your website? Questions to ask
A website can look great and still leave you stuck: unable to move hosts, edit your own content, or even keep your domain if you part ways with the company that built it. Website ownership problems rarely show up until you try to leave, which is the worst possible time to find out.
What owning your website actually means
Owning a website means you control four things independently of your provider: the domain name, the content (words, photos, logo, brand assets), the site itself (its design and code, or a usable export of it), and the right to stop paying without losing any of the above. If any one of those depends on staying a customer, you don't fully own the site.
1. Domain ownership
The domain is the asset that matters most, because it's where your Google rankings, links, and printed business cards all point. It should be registered to you, on an account you can log in to. When a provider registers a domain 'on your behalf' under their own account, they control it, even if you paid for it. You can check this yourself: a WHOIS lookup or your registrar account shows who the registrant is.
2. The content and design
Your text, photos, logo, and brand assets should be yours to keep and reuse, with no licence that takes them back when you cancel. Custom photography and a logo designed for you are the items most often caught up in this, so ask about them specifically.
3. The site itself
This is the one most people miss. Some platforms let you leave with your content but not your site: the design only exists inside their builder and can't be exported. Others hand over the files or give you a working copy you can host anywhere. Ask which it is before you start, not when you're leaving.
4. The ability to leave
A month-to-month arrangement means your provider has to keep earning your business. A multi-year contract, cancellation fees, or 'export fees' to get your own content back are all signs the business model depends on it being hard to leave.
Questions to ask any web provider before you sign
- Whose name and account will the domain be registered under?
- If I cancel, what exactly do I leave with, and in what format?
- Can my site be moved to another host, or does it only work on your platform?
- Are there cancellation fees, minimum terms, or charges to export my content?
- Who owns the logo, photos, and copy you create for me?
- Can I get the answers to these in writing?
How this works with us
We think you should be able to check a provider's answers against what they publish, so here is ours. Every plan is month-to-month with no setup fee and no long-term contract. You can cancel yourself from your billing page in a couple of clicks, effective at the end of your current billing cycle, with no cancellation fees. Your site, domain, and content are yours, and if you leave, we hand everything over.
Whoever you work with, get the answers to the questions above before you commit. Ownership shouldn't be a perk. It should be the starting point.