Who Owns Your Website? What to Check Before You Sign Anything
Owning a website is really four things: the domain, the hosting, the site itself and the content. Each can have a different owner. Here is how to check all four before you sign, and how the pay monthly models compare.
Most owners assume that paying for a website means owning it, as paying for a van means owning the van. Often it does not, and the difference only shows at the worst moment: when the designer stops answering, when a renewal invoice arrives with a number you don’t recognise, or when you try to move and discover you can’t take anything with you.
None of this needs to be a mystery. A website is made of a handful of parts, each with an owner, and the questions to ask are short.
The four things “owning a website” actually means
When people say “my website”, they usually mean the whole arrangement. Legally and practically it splits into four pieces, and each can have a different owner.
- The domain name. The address customers type in, such as yourbusiness.co.uk. It is registered with a domain registrar, in someone’s name, and it renews every year or two.
- The hosting. The server space where the site lives. It is an account with a hosting company, again in someone’s name, usually paid monthly or annually.
- The site itself. The files, code and database that make the pages work. On WordPress that is a folder of files plus a database; on a website builder it may not exist as anything you can download at all.
- The content. The wording, your logo, your photographs and any stock images. Wording written for you is usually yours once paid for; stock photographs are licensed, not owned, and the licence is often tied to whoever bought it.
The four pieces move independently: you can own the domain but not the hosting, or the content but no way to run the site. The clean version is your name on the domain, a portable site, and a contract that says what happens at the end.
The domain name: the one that matters most
If you only check one thing, check this. The domain is the piece customers remember, the piece printed on your van and your invoices, and the piece that carries any reputation the site has built up with Google. If somebody else is the registrant, they control it, whatever the invoices say.
Look up your domain on a WHOIS service (for a .co.uk address, the Nominet lookup). For most UK domains the registrant’s name is shown or can be confirmed. If the registrant is your web company rather than you or your business, ask them to transfer the registration into your name. A reputable company will do it without fuss; they may have registered it on your behalf for convenience. A company that resists is telling you something.
Keep the registrar login somewhere findable and make sure renewal reminders reach an inbox you still read. More domains are lost to a forgotten renewal than to any dispute.
Hosting: whose account is it?
Hosting is where the arguments happen, because it is where money changes hands every month. There are two honest ways to arrange it.
In the first, the hosting account is in your name and your web company has access to it. You pay the hosting company directly; if you fall out with the designer, you remove their access and carry on.
In the second, the web company hosts the site on an account they own, as part of a managed service, and you pay them. This is not a problem in itself; it is how most managed and pay monthly services work, including PrimeStart’s Website. What matters is what the contract says you can take with you when you leave, and whether the company will hand over a copy of the site when you ask.
The version to avoid is the one where nobody has written this down. If the answer to “what happens to my site if I stop paying?” is a shrug, assume the worst and plan accordingly.
The site itself: can it actually be moved?
Some websites are portable and some are not, and the difference is baked in on day one.
A site built on WordPress, or on any open platform, exists as files and a database. It can be exported, copied to another host, and run by any competent developer. That is what makes it worth “owning”: if you have a copy, you have the website.
A site built on a closed website builder is different. The design, the pages and often the images live inside that company’s system, and the export options are usually limited to a rough copy of the text. You can leave, but you leave the site behind and start again. Some builders are honest about this and their pricing reflects it; the problem is when a small business is sold “their website” and only later learns it cannot leave the building.
Some agencies also build on their own proprietary systems for the same reason: it keeps clients. If a company cannot tell you, in a sentence, how you would move the site to another host, treat that as your answer.
What “rental” models really mean
Pay monthly websites have become common, and the word “rental” gets attached to them, sometimes fairly and sometimes not. The models differ a great deal, so it is worth separating them.
- Pure rental. You pay every month for as long as you want a website. Stop paying and the site is switched off. You never receive the files and there is no end point at which anything becomes yours. This is the model the word “rental” describes accurately.
- Subscription with an exit. You pay monthly for a managed service, with a minimum term. At the end of the term you can keep paying for the management, or take the site with you. The monthly fee is buying both the build and the running of it, and there is a defined point at which the website is yours.
- Finance in disguise. A one-off build cost spread over instalments, sometimes with a credit agreement behind it. You are borrowing to buy, which suits some businesses and not others; the paperwork should say so clearly.
The questions that separate them are: is there an end to the minimum term, what happens at that point, and will you have something you can take away. Any of the three can be a reasonable deal. Only the first one deserves to be called renting.
How PrimeStart’s model works
Here is our own arrangement, without softening.
The Website is £49.99 a month with a £0 upfront website design fee. The first £49.99 is taken at signup and there is an 18-month minimum term, which comes to £899.82 in total over those 18 months. During that time PrimeStart designs, builds, hosts, secures, backs up and maintains the site, and handles reasonable small changes under fair use.
Once the 18-month minimum is complete and the payments due under it have been made, the website is yours. You then have two choices. You can stay with PrimeStart at £49.99 a month on a rolling basis, with no new minimum term, and we carry on hosting and looking after it. Or you can move the website to hosting of your own, and we will help you take it. Moving is subject to the third-party licences any website relies on, such as WordPress itself, plugins, fonts and stock photography, which is true of every website ever built and not a catch specific to us.
The domain is registered in your business’s name. The site is built on WordPress, so it is portable. The full wording sits in the Website Subscription Terms, which are what govern the arrangement; the summary on the pricing page and in our frequently asked questions is there so nobody has to read a contract to understand the shape of it.
We set it up this way for a plain reason: we would rather customers stayed because the service is worth £49.99 a month than because leaving means losing their website.
Content, photographs and the fine print
Two smaller points catch people out. Wording written for you normally becomes yours once paid for, but have it in writing, and make sure you hold the original logo files rather than a small copy embedded in the site. Stock photographs are licensed to whoever bought them, usually the designer, and the licence decides whether they can travel with the site; your own photographs are yours, which is one more reason pictures of your actual work are worth the effort.
A five-minute ownership check
These five questions cover most of it, whether you have a site already or are about to sign for one.
- Whose name is on the domain registration, and where are the renewal emails going?
- Whose name is on the hosting account, and who has the login?
- Is the site built on something that can be exported and hosted elsewhere?
- What does the contract say happens at the end of the term, and is there an end?
- Do I have the original logo files and my own photographs?
If you can answer all five with confidence, you own your website in every sense that matters. If two or more of the answers are “I’m not sure”, it is worth an hour of your time to find out now rather than the week you would spend finding out later.
Questions people ask
Can a web designer keep my domain if I stop paying them?
If the domain is registered in their name, in practice they control it, whatever your invoices say. That is why the registrant should be you or your business. If a domain you paid for is in a designer’s name, ask for it to be transferred; most will do so, and a registrar can advise if they refuse.
Does “pay monthly” always mean I never own the site?
No. It depends on the model. A pure rental switches the site off when you stop paying. A subscription with a minimum term and an exit, like PrimeStart’s, gives you the website at the end of the term. Read the part of the contract that describes what happens when the arrangement ends.
If I leave PrimeStart after 18 months, what do I actually get?
The WordPress website itself, which you can move to hosting of your own, along with the domain that was always registered in your name. Transfer is subject to third-party licences such as WordPress, plugins, fonts and stock photography. Or stay at £49.99 a month rolling and we keep looking after it.
Is a website builder site worth less because I can’t export it?
It is worth less as an asset, because you cannot take it anywhere, but it can still be the right choice for a business that is happy to stay put and manage the site itself. The mistake is not choosing a builder; it is being told you own something you don’t.
Ownership sounds like a legal question and it is partly one, but mostly it is a practical one: could you keep your website running if the people who built it disappeared tomorrow? Ask the questions above, get the answers in writing, and you will never have to find out the hard way.
