Who Owns Your Website? The Eight Things That Should Be in Your Name

Who actually owns your website?

Whoever the accounts are registered to, and whoever the contract says owns the code. Not necessarily whoever paid for it.

This surprises people, so it is worth stating plainly: paying an invoice does not automatically transfer ownership of the domain, the hosting, the analytics, or the copyright in the code. In most countries copyright sits with the creator unless it is assigned in writing. Accounts belong to whoever registered them.

None of this requires anyone to behave badly. The overwhelming majority of cases we see are disorganisation, a supplier who set things up on their own account years ago “to make it easier”, and nobody thinking about it again until it mattered.

The eight-item check

Run this now. It takes about fifteen minutes.

What	Who must hold it	How to check
Domain registrar account	You	Log in yourself. If you cannot, you do not own it.
DNS control	You	Could you point the domain somewhere new today, alone?
Hosting account	You	Is it billed to your card, on your email?
Website files or code	You	Do you have a copy, or access to the repository?
Store admin	You, as Owner	You are Owner and the agency is Staff. Never the reverse.
Analytics property	You	Can you remove any other user?
Ad accounts	You	You own the account; agencies get access
Google Business Profile	You	Is the primary owner your email address?

The universal test is the same for every row: can you log in yourself, right now, without asking anyone?

Why the domain matters most

Lose control of the domain and you lose three things at once: your website, your email addresses, and the verified identity behind your Google listing and your social profiles.

Everything else on the list is recoverable with money and inconvenience. A site can be rebuilt. Analytics history is annoying to lose but not fatal. The domain is different, because your customers, your suppliers, your invoices and your search rankings are all attached to it.

If you check only one row this week, check that one.

Ownership and access are not the same thing

This is the distinction that resolves most disputes before they start.

• You own. The account exists in your name, on your email, billed to you.
• They access. Your supplier is added as a user, with the permissions the job needs, and you can remove them.

A supplier who needs ownership to do their job is describing a workflow problem, not a technical requirement. Every platform in this list supports multiple users with different permission levels, precisely so this arrangement works.

What to put in writing

One clause covers most of it:

All code, designs, content and accounts are the client’s property, transferring on payment for the work done rather than on completion of the whole project. The supplier is granted revocable access, not ownership. Source files and credentials are provided on request at any time.

The phrase “on payment for the work done” matters. Tying transfer to completion of the entire project means a job that stalls at 80% leaves you with nothing, having paid for 80%.

Any competent supplier agrees to this immediately. The reaction to that paragraph tells you more about who you are hiring than a portfolio does.

How to fix it if you are already in this position

Ask first, in writing, without accusation. “Could you make me the registrant on the domain and send me the hosting login? I want everything under our own accounts.” Most of the time that is the end of it.

For the domain specifically: ask for the authorisation code, sometimes called an EPP or transfer code, plus the registrant email address. Open an account at a registrar of your own and start a transfer. If the request is refused, your registrar’s dispute process and the registry’s transfer policies exist for this exact situation.

For the code: ask for a copy of the files or access to the repository. If code exists, this is a two minute request. A supplier who cannot do it in a week either does not have it or does not want you to have it.

For hosting: you can often skip the argument entirely by setting up your own hosting and moving the site there, as long as you control the domain. Which is, again, why the domain comes first.

If access is genuinely refused, you still have options: rebuild on hosting you control, and pursue the domain through the registrar process. It is expensive and slow, which is the whole argument for doing the fifteen minute check today.

The timing point

Ask for all of this at the start of a relationship, when it is a two minute administrative task and nobody has any reason to say no.

Asked at the end, or during a disagreement, the same request becomes leverage in a negotiation. Nothing about the request changed. Only when you made it.

What to do next

If you are about to hire someone, the ownership clause belongs in the brief rather than in a conversation afterward. What to have ready before you hire a web designer covers what goes in writing, and how to get a website made for your business covers the six questions to ask on the first call.

If you are setting up from scratch, what you actually need to start a business online puts ownership in the right place in the sequence, which is before you pay anyone rather than after.

For what the right answer looks like in practice: DappaSol’s builds transfer 100% of the code, accounts and IP to the client from day one. That is the standard this checklist exists to hold every supplier to.