Most owners don't ask who controls their website until the day they need to change something and can't.
It happens more often than it should. A designer moves on and stops answering email. A relationship ends badly. A business changes hands and the new owner learns the online accounts didn't come with it.
When Kauai Sealcoating & Paving changed owners, its Google Business Profile still had to be taken over from the previous owner before it could be managed properly. Nothing was wrong with the business. The paperwork just never covered it.
Ownership isn't one thing. A website is several separate pieces, and each one can be held by a different person.
The Domain Matters Most
Your domain name is your address online. Your email, your Google listing and every link anyone has ever shared point back to it. Whoever controls the domain controls all of that.
It should be registered to your business, in a registrar account you can log into yourself. A designer can manage it for you. You should still own the account.
Webvana clients keep their domain. That isn't negotiable on our end.
The Files Are a Different Question
The second piece is the site itself: the pages, images and code. Here the honest answer is that it depends on how the site was built.
Hosted builders like Wix and Squarespace rent you the site. You can leave, but the design generally doesn't come with you in a form you can use somewhere else.
Custom sites are more portable, with a catch. A WordPress site needs hosting, updates and someone who knows WordPress. A site built with a modern framework is a set of files you can move, but changing it still takes someone who knows that framework's build process.
Webvana clients can keep their site files if they choose. Whether that's practical depends on the framework and on whether the next person can work with it. Owning the files and being able to use them are two different things, and you should know which one you're getting.
The Accounts Around Your Site
A few other accounts matter almost as much as the domain:
- Your hosting account
- Your Google Business Profile
- Google Analytics and Search Console
- Your social media profiles
Each of these lets you add other people with their own access. Your business should be the owner, and your designer or marketer should be added as a user or manager. If they leave, you remove them. Nothing else changes.
Questions to Ask Before You Sign
- Whose name is the domain registered under, and can I log into that account?
- If we part ways, do I get the site files, and can someone else work with them?
- Who owns the hosting account?
- Am I the owner of my Google Business Profile, Analytics and Search Console, or just a user?
- What happens to my email if the hosting changes?
A designer should be able to answer all five in a few minutes.
If You've Already Lost Access
Start with the domain. Most registrars have a process for proving you own a domain, and getting it back makes everything else easier.
For a Google Business Profile, Google has a process for requesting ownership of a profile someone else controls. It takes some time, but it works.
Then go down the list above and get yourself named as owner on each account.
Final Thought
A good designer has no reason to hold your accounts. If these questions make someone uncomfortable, that tells you something about the arrangement.