Who Owns Your Website? Domain, Hosting, Content and Logins: How to Check, and What to Ask Before You Pay

You own your website only if five separate things are in your name or written into your contract: the domain registration, the hosting account, the words and photos, the platform the site runs on, and the logins to Google and email. Paying the invoice is not enough on its own; in the UK, for example, copyright in commissioned work usually stays with the person who created it unless you agree otherwise in writing. Each part takes a few minutes to check, and the time to check is before you pay, not when you want to leave.

What are the parts of a website you need to own?

Owners tend to think of a website as one thing. Legally and technically it is a bundle, and each piece can sit with a different person or company. Here is the bundle, with the risk if it is not yours.

How do I check who owns my domain name?

The person or company listed as the registrant controls the domain. The firm that sold it is the registrar. Your web designer might be neither, one or both.

• 1Find the registrar. Search your domain at lookup.icann.org, ICANN’s free lookup tool. It shows the registrar and the renewal date even when personal details are hidden for privacy.
• 2Ask for registrar access. If you have no login to that registrar, ask your designer which account the domain is in.
• 3Check the registrant name. In the registrar account, the registrant or owner contact should be you or your company, with an email address you read.
• 4Check the renewal date. A domain that lapses can be bought by someone else after the grace period ends.
• 5Note who receives the renewal reminders. If they go to an old designer’s inbox, you will not see them.

Privacy redaction is normal. Many lookups show “REDACTED” for the owner’s name, so the public result cannot prove ownership either way. The registrar account is the reliable place to look.

Can a web designer refuse to give me my domain?

If the domain is registered in your name, you hold the key. ICANN’s Transfer Policy requires registrars to give the registered name holder the transfer code (called the AuthInfo code) within five calendar days of asking (the policy lists a few narrow grounds for refusing a transfer, such as unpaid registration fees). You can then move the domain to a registrar of your choice.

If the domain is registered in the designer’s name, the designer is the registered name holder and the code goes to them. You would need their cooperation to change the registrant. That is why the name on the registration matters more than who paid for it.

Two timing rules surprise people. Under the same policy, a registrar may refuse a transfer to another registrar within 60 days of a domain being created, and a change of registrant usually triggers a 60-day lock on moving registrar unless you opted out first. Plan a move with that in mind rather than the week your contract ends.

Who owns the words and photos on my website?

This depends on the country and the contract, so treat what follows as a starting point and check with an adviser for your situation. The UK Intellectual Property Office’s guidance says the first owner of copyright is the person or organisation that created the work, that a freelancer working under a contract for services will usually keep copyright in what they produce, and that the commissioner owns it only if this is agreed in writing. Employees are different: their employer is usually the first owner.

In practice that means a sentence in your contract does most of the work. Look for wording that assigns copyright in the written content and any custom graphics to you on payment, or at least gives you a permanent licence to keep using and moving them.

Photos need their own check. If your designer used stock images under their own subscription, the licence may belong to them, not you. Ask for a list of every image and where it came from. Photos you took yourself are already yours. Photos of your premises taken by a hired photographer follow the same creator-owns-it starting point unless the agreement says otherwise.

Can I move my website to another host or platform?

Sometimes fully, sometimes partly, sometimes not at all. It depends on what the site is built with.

• 1Hand-built or open-source sites: the files and database can usually be copied to any host. This is the most portable option, if you get the files and the database.
• 2DIY website builders: one of the most popular builders states in its own help pages that it does not support exporting sites to an external host. The domain can move; the design cannot.
• 3Another major builder’s export file, by its own help pages, includes basic pages, one blog and text and image blocks, but leaves out store and product pages, headers and footers, style settings and custom code.
• 4Agency platforms: some agencies build on their own in-house system. Ask whether you receive anything at all if you leave.

Hosted platforms trade portability for convenience, and many owners are happy with that. Just know it before you invest years of content in one place, and keep your own copy of every page’s text and image.

What about the Google and email accounts around the site?

These are easy to overlook and often more valuable than the site. Your Google Business Profile holds your reviews. Search Console holds your search history. An analytics account holds years of visitor data. If a designer created them under their own Google account, you are a guest in your own listing.

Each of these tools lets the owner add other people as users or managers. That is the right arrangement: you as owner, your provider as a manager you can remove. Open each one today and look at the users list.

Email on your domain is the same story. If your address is [email protected], the mail runs through settings on the domain. Whoever controls the domain can, by mistake or on purpose, stop your email. That alone is a reason to hold the domain yourself.

Worked example: a physiotherapy clinic leaving its designer

Take a hypothetical one-room physiotherapy clinic. A freelance designer built the site five years ago, registered the domain in the designer’s own name “to make renewals easier”, hosted it on the designer’s server and set up the Google listing from the designer’s account. Now the clinic wants a new site.

• 1Step 1: ask the designer, politely and in writing, to change the domain registrant to the clinic and add the owner as an owner on the Google Business Profile. Most designers agree; the delay is usually forgetfulness, not bad faith.
• 2Step 2: while waiting, copy every page’s text into a document and save the photos the clinic took itself.
• 3Step 3: once the registrant is the clinic, ask the registrar for the transfer code if moving registrar, remembering the possible 60-day lock after a registrant change.
• 4Step 4: build the new site, keep the same page addresses where possible, and redirect any that change, so Google keeps the history.
• 5Step 5: point the domain at the new site and check that email still arrives before cancelling the old hosting.

What should I ask any website provider before paying?

Copy these twelve questions into an email. A good provider answers them in writing without fuss.

• 1Will the domain be registered with me or my company as registrant?
• 2Will I have my own login to the registrar, or at least the right to the transfer code on request?
• 3Whose name is on the hosting account, and what happens to the site if I stop paying the monthly fee?
• 4Does the copyright in the text you write pass to me, and from when?
• 5Where does each image come from, and does its licence cover my use after we part?
• 6What platform is the site built on, and what exactly does an export contain?
• 7Will you give me a copy of all page text and images if I leave?
• 8Will I be the owner of the Google Business Profile, Search Console and analytics, with you as a manager?
• 9Who controls the email settings on my domain?
• 10What is the minimum contract term and the notice period?
• 11Is there any fee for handing over the domain, files or accounts?
• 12Who renews the domain, and to whose email do reminders go?

When is it fine not to own every part?

Owning everything is not always worth the effort. A managed monthly service, where the provider runs the hosting and the platform, is a reasonable choice for a busy owner, the same way leasing a van is. What you should never give up is the domain, your Google accounts and a copy of your own words and photos. With those three, leaving a provider is an inconvenience. Without them, it can mean starting again from nothing, including your reviews.

How does Adyft Sites handle ownership?

Adyft Sites is a managed service: we write the pages, build the site, and run the hosting, security and monthly changes as part of the fee. The domain is registered in your name, not ours, so it stays yours whatever you decide later. It costs about $12–20 a year, paid as a normal domain renewal.

Because hosting is part of the service, the site runs on our hosting while you are a customer. That is the honest trade of any managed plan, and it is why the domain sitting in your name matters: it is the part that lets you point your address somewhere else. For every other row in the table above, ask us the twelve questions before you pay and keep our answers, exactly as you would with anyone else.

If you want full control of the files and server yourself, or you enjoy running your own site, a self-hosted build will suit you better than any managed service, ours included.

Sources: ICANN, Transfer Policy — https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/transfer-policy-2016-06-01-en · ICANN Lookup — https://lookup.icann.org · UK Intellectual Property Office, Ownership of copyright works — https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ownership-of-copyright-works · Export and hosting limits: the help centres of two major DIY website builders, read 15 October 2026.