This is the least glamorous question in a web project and one of the most expensive to get wrong. We meet businesses who cannot update their own website, cannot move it, and in a few cases cannot prove they own their own domain name, because everything was registered in a vendor’s name and the relationship has since ended.
The rule is simple. Your domain, your hosting, your logins and your files belong to your business. An agency should manage them for you. It should not hold them.
What “in your name” actually means
Four things are worth separating, because a vendor can hand over one and keep the others.
The domain name. The registration should list your business as the registrant, with a contact address your company controls. This matters most: the domain is your address, your email, and increasingly your identity.
The hosting account. The account should be in your business name and billed to you, or transferable to you on request.
The website’s admin access. You should have an administrator login to the content management system, not a limited editor account.
The files and, where relevant, the source code. Whatever was built for you should be available to you.
How to check what you have today
You can do most of this yourself in a few minutes.
For the domain, run a WHOIS lookup. Any registrar’s WHOIS page, or whois yourdomain.com in a terminal, will show the registrant organisation and the expiry date. If privacy protection is enabled the contact details may be masked, but the registrar and expiry will still show, and your provider can confirm the registrant on request.
For hosting, find the invoice. Whoever is billed is usually whoever controls the account.
For the website, log in and look at your own user role. If you cannot add or remove another user, you are not an administrator.
If any of those checks comes back pointing at someone else, that is worth resolving now rather than during an emergency.
What to ask before you sign
Put these in the proposal, not in a conversation:
- In whose name will the domain be registered?
- In whose name will the hosting account be opened?
- Will we receive administrator access, and when?
- What exactly is handed over at the end, and is training included?
- If we move to another provider in two years, what do we take with us?
A straightforward supplier will answer all five without hesitation, because the answers cost them nothing. Hesitation is the signal.
If you are already locked out
It happens, and it is usually recoverable.
Start with the registrar rather than the vendor. Registrars have a process for disputed or transferred registrations, and a business that can evidence its identity and its prior payments has a reasonable position. Gather your evidence first: invoices, email correspondence, and anything showing the domain was bought on your behalf.
If the website itself cannot be recovered, the domain still matters more than the design. A site can be rebuilt in weeks. An email address your customers have used for years is much harder to replace.
How we handle it
Every domain, hosting account and login we set up is registered in the client’s name, and handed over with training at launch. We look after them, and we say so in writing in the proposal before any work starts. If a client ever leaves us, everything goes with them.
That is not generosity. It is the only arrangement that is defensible, and it removes the single biggest risk a business takes when it hires anyone to build its website.