Nobody asks this question while things are going well. It gets asked on the day you want to move to somebody else, and by then the answer is already fixed.
A website is not one thing you own. It is three, and they can be held by three different people.
The domain name
Your address. It is rented from a registrar a year at a time, and whoever is listed as the registrant controls it — where it points, when it renews, whether it transfers. If that is your web company rather than you, they do not merely host your site. They hold the sign above your door.
This is the one that matters most and the one most often quietly in somebody else's name, usually because they registered it for you as a favour during a build and nobody thought about it again.
The hosting account
The server the site runs on. It is entirely reasonable for your web company to manage this — that is a service, and a useful one. The question is not who administers it day to day. It is whether you could be given access to it, and a copy of what is on it, without a negotiation.
The site itself
The pages, the photos, the words, the design. You paid for it, so the instinct is that you own it. Whether you do depends on what you signed, and on something more practical: whether it can leave. A site built on a platform nobody else can host is yours in the same way a song on a broken record player is yours.
The test is not "do I own it" in the abstract. It is "if I wanted to move tomorrow, what would I have to ask permission for?"
How to check, this afternoon
- Look up your own domain on a public WHOIS service. It will tell you the registrar and, unless privacy is switched on, the registrant. If the registrar is a company you have never had an account with, you have your answer.
- Try to log in to the registrar and the hosting account. Not to change anything — just to confirm the accounts exist in your name and you can reach them.
- Find out where the renewal invoices go. Whoever pays it is usually whoever controls it.
- Ask for a copy of the site: the files, the database, the images. Watch what happens. A company with nothing to hide will send it or explain plainly how to get it.
What to ask before you sign anything
These are the questions we would want asked of us, and of anybody else you are considering. There are no trick answers — a straight one to each is what you are listening for.
- Whose name is the domain registered in, and can that be put in writing?
- If I leave, what exactly do I get, and how long does it take?
- Is there anything about this site that only you can host?
- Who holds the login to the domain registrar — not the site, the registrar?
None of this means you should run everything yourself. Most owners should not; that is the point of paying somebody. It means the difference between hiring a company and being held by one is four questions, and the cheapest time to ask them is before you need the answers.
