Who Owns Your Website? The Domain, Hosting and Ownership Checklist

The person who made it, unless paper says otherwise. Section 101 of the Copyright Act defines a work made for hire two ways: a work prepared by an employee within the scope of employment, or a specially commissioned work in one of nine listed categories, and only if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that it is a work made for hire. The nine categories are things like contributions to a collective work, parts of a motion picture, translations and instructional texts. A website is not on the list.

So a freelancer or agency that builds your site owns the copyright in the design, the code and the copy by default. You have a license to use it, usually implied by the fact that you paid. What you do not have is the right to take it elsewhere, modify it freely, or stop them reusing it, unless the contract assigns the copyright to you. Most good contracts do. Many templates and quotes do not mention it.

Ownership of a website is really six separate things: the domain, the DNS, the hosting, the files, the content and the accounts around it. Each one can belong to a different party. The checklist below goes through them in order of how hard they are to get back.

Ask one question before signing anything: if we part ways next year, what do I walk away with, and whose name is on each account?

The domain is the address customers know, the one on the truck and the business cards. Lose it and the site, the email and the reviews that link to it go with it. It has to be in your name.

1. The registrant is you or your business, not the agency. Log into the registrar and read the contact record.
2. The registrar account is in your email address, with your card on it, and you know the password. An agency can be added as a manager without owning the account.
3. Auto-renew is on and the card is current. Verisign’s wholesale .com price is $10.26 a year, rising to $10.97 on November 1, 2026, and registrars add margin on top. A lapsed renewal costs far more than that.
4. Registrar lock is on. Most registrars turn it on by default; it stops a transfer without your code.
5. The registrant record was changed with your knowledge. ICANN’s transfer policy locks a domain against moving to another registrar for 60 days after the registrant changes, and DNSimple notes it cannot be bypassed or shortened once in effect. If an agency changes the registrant to itself, you are locked out of moving it for two months.

If the domain is currently in an agency’s account, ask for it to be transferred to a registrar account you open yourself, and do it before you change anything else. Sitesmith registers the domain to the client on both the lease and the own path. Custom domain purchase and setup is $75 on a site we did not build.

DNS is the record that points the domain at the server and routes your email. It usually lives at the registrar or at a service like Cloudflare. Whoever controls DNS can move the site, break the email or redirect the domain in a minute, so the account should be yours, with the agency added as a user.

Hosting is the server the site runs on. There are three patterns. On a builder like Wix or Squarespace the hosting is the product: Wix’s help center says a Wix site must run on Wix’s servers, and Squarespace exports layout pages, blog posts and text to an XML file but not store pages, style settings or custom CSS. On shared hosting like Bluehost the account is yours if you opened it, and it renews at $15.99 to $20.99 a month after the promotional term. On an agency’s own hosting you have whatever the contract says, which is often nothing.

The question to ask is simple. If the agency disappeared tomorrow, could I log in somewhere and see the site running? If the answer is no, the site is a service you rent, not a thing you own, and the price should reflect that.

Three different things with three different answers.

• Source files. The code, the theme, the design files. Without a written assignment these belong to the builder under copyright law. Ask for the assignment in the contract, and ask for a copy of the files at launch, in a repository or a folder you control. A site you cannot rebuild from files is a site you cannot move.
• Content. The copy on the pages. If the agency wrote it, the same rule applies. If you wrote it or supplied it, it was always yours. Either way, keep a plain-text copy of every page outside the site.
• Photos. Real photos of your crew and your work are yours if you took them or paid a photographer under a contract that says so. Stock photos are licensed, and a license bought on the agency’s account may not transfer to you when you leave. Ask which images are stock and whether the license is in your name.
• The logo. Same as the source files. If a designer drew it, get the assignment in writing and get the vector file.

Sitesmith writes the copy from your business, your reviews and your services. On the own path the build, the copy and the files are handed over cleanly if you move on. On the lease, we own the build while you subscribe, the content is yours, and the buyout puts everything in your hands for $1,000.

These are the accounts that hold your history: the traffic, the rankings and the reviews. They are the easiest to lose because they are created quietly by whoever set up the site.

Google Analytics has five roles: Administrator, Editor, Marketer, Analyst and Viewer. Google says the Administrator has full control, can add and delete users and can grant full permissions to anyone, including themselves. If the agency is the only Administrator, you have a report, not an account. Search Console works the same way: the property should be verified on your Google account, with the agency added as a user.

Google Business Profile is the one that hurts most. The reviews live there. Google’s help page says only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership, and a new owner or manager must wait seven days before they can manage every feature, including removing other users or changing primary ownership. If an agency created the profile on its own account, the reviews belong to a listing you cannot control until they hand it over.

1. Open business.google.com and check People and access. Your account should be Primary owner.
2. Open analytics.google.com, then Admin, then Account access management. Your account should be Administrator.
3. Open Search Console and check Users and permissions. Your account should be Owner.
4. Add the agency as a user on each, at the level they need, and nothing higher.

Sitesmith creates Search Console, Bing Webmaster and analytics on your Google and Microsoft accounts and is added as a user you can remove. The Google Business Profile is set up or claimed under your account. That is true on both paths.

Three endings, depending on what was on paper.

The clean one. The domain was in your name, the files were assigned to you, you hold the hosting login and the Google accounts. You give notice, they remove themselves as users, the next vendor picks up where they left off. This is what a written contract with an assignment clause buys.

The expensive one. The site is on the agency’s hosting under the agency’s copyright. You can keep paying them, or you can rebuild from scratch. The domain is yours, so the address survives, but the design and the copy do not. This is most template vendors and most verbal agreements.

The bad one. The domain is in the agency’s account and the Google Business Profile is under their login. You can register a new domain and start a new profile with zero reviews, or negotiate. ICANN’s 60-day lock after a registrant change means even a cooperative handover takes two months before the domain can move.

Before you leave, export everything: a copy of every page as text, every photo at full size, the analytics history, the review list. Then remove the agency from each account only after the new vendor is in and working. Do not cancel hosting until the site is live somewhere else.

Two paths, one honest table.

The buyout is the same from either tier because the deposit comes off the price: $500 plus $1,000 on Standard, $1,500 plus $1,000 on Signature. Monthly payments cover hosting and maintenance and do not count toward it. Nothing is on a contract term.

On both paths the domain, the content and the Google Business Profile are yours from day one. The only thing that changes is who owns the build, and you can change that for $1,000.