Who Owns Your Website? Domain, Hosting, Code, and Accounts Explained
“Who owns your website?” sounds like a question with an obvious answer. Often it is not. The site might be paid for by the business, built by a freelancer, registered under the freelancer’s email, and hosted on an account nobody at the business can log in to. Everything works fine, until the freelancer moves on, a card expires, or you want to make a change. Here is what to check, before you need to.
A website is four things, not one
| Piece | What it is | Who should control it |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Your address, like yourbusiness.com, registered for a year or more at a time through a registrar. | The business, as the listed registrant. |
| Hosting | The service that stores the site and sends it to visitors. | The business account, or an arrangement written down. |
| Code and content | The files, text, and photos that make up the site. | The business, with a copy it can access. |
| Accounts | Search Console, analytics, Google Business Profile, forms, email. | The business as owner; your designer as a user. |
The domain matters most
If you lose everything else, you can rebuild a website. If you lose the domain, you lose the address customers, Google, your business cards, and your email all point to.
A domain is registered through a registrar, and the registrar’s records name a registrant: the person or organization that holds the name. Under ICANN’s transfer rules, only the registered name holder, the administrative contact, or someone they authorize can start moving a domain to another registrar, and doing so uses an authorization code the registrar provides.1 In practice that means whoever is listed, and whoever controls the login and the email address on the account, controls the domain.
So the questions to ask are simple:
- Can you log in to the registrar yourself?
- Is the registrant your business, not your designer or a former employee?
- Does renewal email go to an address you actually read?
- Is auto-renew on, with a card that will not expire next month?
Hosting and the code
Hosting arrangements vary, and there is nothing wrong with your developer managing hosting for you, as long as you know where the site lives and what happens if you part ways. The thing to avoid is a site that exists only inside someone else’s account with no copy you can access.
Ask for one of these: the site’s code in a repository you own or can be added to, or a full export you keep yourself. For a site built on a platform with an editor, make sure the account is in the business’s name, or that you are an owner on it, not just a guest.
The accounts nobody thinks about
Several free Google tools quietly become important over time:
- Search Console shows how your site appears in Google Search. It has owners, who can add and remove people and change settings, and users with view or limited rights.2 Google requires at least one verified owner on each property, so make sure the business is that owner and your designer is added as a user or delegated owner, not the only owner.2
- Google Business Profile controls your listing on Maps and Search once ownership is verified.3 The verified owner should be the business.
- Analytics, form tools, and email follow the same rule: the business owns the account and invites helpers in.
A ten-minute ownership check
- Find your registrar. Look for renewal emails or ask your designer which company the domain is registered with.
- Log in. If you cannot, ask for access now, while everything is friendly.
- Check the registrant name and email on the domain.
- Turn on auto-renew and check the card on file.
- Ask where the code lives and get a copy or access.
- Open Search Console and your Business Profile and confirm you are listed as an owner.
How I handle it
My take: the code, the domain, and the hosting should be in the client’s name, and that is how I set up every project. I keep access as a helper, so I can make changes when asked, but the business can carry on without me. If a designer, including me, is reluctant to put things in your name, that is worth a conversation before the site launches.
None of this requires technical skill. It is mostly logins and names. Spend ten minutes on it this week, and a lost password or a change of designer stays a small problem instead of a big one.
Sources
Numbers in the text refer to these sources. Statements marked “My take” are my own interpretation.
- Transfer Policy (about the policy and FAQs for registrants) (opens in new tab) ICANN
- Managing owners, users, and permissions (opens in new tab) Search Console Help
- Establish your business details with Google (opens in new tab) Google Search Central