This is the least interesting article on this site and the one most likely to save somebody real money. It takes ten minutes to check and it is almost impossible to fix in a hurry.

A website is three separate things, and they can each be owned by a different person.

  1. The domain name

    Your address - yourbusiness.co.uk. Rented from a registrar, yearly. This is the one that matters most, because it is your identity: your email runs on it, your printed material points at it, and everything Google knows about you is attached to it. Whoever holds the account controls it.

  2. The hosting

    The computer your site sits on. Cheaply replaced, and rarely the real problem - but if your host is an account in someone else's name, moving away means asking their permission.

  3. The site itself

    The design and the files that make it work. On a platform like Wix or Squarespace you are licensing the tool rather than owning something you can take elsewhere - which is a fair trade for what those platforms give you, as long as you know that is the trade. On a custom or WordPress build, the files can be handed over, and should be.

How to check, in ten minutes

  • Look up your domain on a public WHOIS service, or on Nominet's own lookup for a .uk address. It will show the registrar and often the registrant. If the name is a design agency rather than your business, that is worth a conversation.
  • Find out whether you can log in to the registrar account yourself, with your own email address, without asking anybody. Being able to log in is what ownership means in practice.
  • Check which email address the domain renewal notice goes to. If it is a former designer's inbox, you will not know your domain is expiring until it has.
  • Ask yourself who you would contact to move hosting tomorrow. If the answer is a person rather than an account you hold, you do not currently control it.

What to ask before you hire anyone

Four questions. Any honest provider will answer all four without hesitation, and the manner of the answer tells you as much as the content.

  • Will the domain be registered in my name, on an account I can access?
  • If I leave, what exactly do I take with me - and is there a fee attached to leaving?
  • Who has the logins, and how do I get them?
  • If you stopped trading tomorrow, what would happen to my site and my email?

That last one is the useful one. It is not rude to ask - it is the same question you would ask of any supplier your business depends on.

How we handle it

Your domain is registered in your name, on your own account, and you hold the login from the start. The site is yours at the end of the project. If you ever want to move it elsewhere, you can, and we will help hand it over rather than make it awkward. A studio that has to hold your domain hostage to keep your business has a bigger problem than your leaving.

What is agreed before work starts, what is paid when, and what you hold at the end of it.

See how a project runs