Do you really own your website?

The question nobody asks until it's too late

Most business owners find out who owns their website the day they try to leave. The designer stops answering. The domain turns out to be registered to the agency. The monthly fee, it emerges, was rent, not ownership. Starting again from scratch costs more than the original site did.

None of this is rare. It's the standard small-print of cheap website deals, and it works because nobody thinks to ask the ownership question at the start, when it's easy.

The three things to check

There are only three things that matter, and you can check all of them in one short conversation.

The domain. Your web address should be registered to your business, with you as the owner. Ask directly: "Will the domain be registered in my name?" If the answer is anything other than a plain yes, walk away. A domain registered to the web company means your web address, the one on your van and your business cards, belongs to them.

The website itself. The design, the files and the content should be yours. Some companies build on platforms you can never leave, or licence the site to you rather than selling it. Ask: "If I leave, do I take the website with me?"

The handover. Even when you own everything on paper, a company can make leaving so awkward that you give up. Ask what happens if you move: do they hand over cleanly, and is there a fee? A modest, stated transfer fee is fair. Vague answers are not.

What a fair arrangement looks like

You own the domain. You own the design and the content. Hosting and technical management can sit with the web company while you're happy, that's normal and usually sensible, but if you ever leave, everything that identifies your business goes with you, handed over properly.

That's how we work at Local Web Studio, and it's written into every agreement: the domain is registered to your business from day one, the site is yours, and if you ever move on, the handover is clean. We'd rather keep clients because the work is good than because leaving is hard.

One question that settles it

If you only ask one thing before paying anyone for a website, ask this: "If we part ways next year, what exactly do I keep, and what does it cost me to take it?" A good answer is specific and short. A bad answer is long.