Do you actually own your website?
Nobody in Port St. Lucie or Fort Pierce wants to find out who really owns their website on the worst possible day: the person who built it has moved on, the renewal notice went to an email nobody reads, or the company wants a fee before it will hand anything over. By then the question is urgent and the answer is out of your hands.
So it is worth asking now, while nothing is wrong: do you own your website? Here is how to tell in an afternoon, and what to ask anyone before they build you a new one.
The short version
- A website is four things: the address, the place it lives, the site itself, and the accounts around it. Owning one of them is not owning the website.
- The test is simple. Could you move your site to someone else next month without asking permission or paying to leave?
- You can check all four yourself, mostly by trying to log in.
- Before you sign with anyone, get the answer in writing. A good web person will be glad you asked.
- Our answer: you own every file. Host with us or take it elsewhere, and your domain and your content are yours either way.
The four things that make up your website
The domain name. That is your address, the yourbusiness.com part. You rent it a year or more at a time from a company called a registrar, and the account it sits in decides who controls it. Whoever holds that login can point your address anywhere, or let it lapse.
The hosting. That is the computer your site actually runs on. It might be an account in your name, an account in your web designer's name, or part of a monthly website-builder service.
The site itself. The design, the pages, the words and the photos. Some arrangements hand you a complete copy you can run anywhere. Others leave you owning the words while the design only works where it was built.
The accounts around it. Email on your domain, your Google Business Profile, your website analytics. These grow up alongside a site and often get set up by whoever was helping at the time, in their name.
Do you own your website? How to check
Set aside an hour and try each of these. If you get stuck on one, that is your answer for that piece.
- Find your domain login. Look for the registrar's renewal emails. Can you sign in to that account yourself? Is the account in your business's name, with an email address you control?
- Find your hosting login. Can you sign in to wherever the site runs? If the only answer is “my web guy handles that”, write down his name and ask him for it.
- Ask for a copy of the site. Ask your current web person what you would get if you left: a full copy of the site, or only the text and images.
- Check the accounts around it. Who is listed as the owner on your Google Business Profile and your analytics? Whose name is on the email setup?
None of this needs technical skill. It needs the logins, and the logins are the point.
Questions to ask before you sign with anyone
These are fair questions for any web designer, us included. Ask them out loud and get the answers in writing.
- Whose name will the domain be registered in? The right answer is yours.
- If I leave, what do I get? You want to hear the whole site, the files and the logins, with nothing held back.
- Is there a fee to leave? Know it now, not later.
- Can I host it somewhere else if I want to? If the answer is no, you are renting.
- Who gets the renewal notices? Someone at your business should, even if the web person handles them.
None of these questions should offend a good web designer. If one does, that tells you something too.
How we handle it
Our answer is short. The site we build is yours, every file. Most clients host with us on a management plan, and some prefer to run it themselves. If you want to host it yourself, we hand over the files and the accounts, and we deliver the complete site as a package you can run anywhere. You own your domain and your content either way, and you are never locked in.
We put it that plainly because it is the first thing we would want to know in your shoes. You can see what a build costs on our page about how much a website costs, and how we build and look after sites on our web design page.
If you find out you do not own yours
Start with the friendly route: ask your current web person to move the domain and hosting into accounts in your name. When it works, it is the quickest way.
If that stalls, or if the site turns out to live only inside someone else's account, get in touch. We will take a look and tell you honestly what you have and what it would take to get it back in your hands, whether that means moving what you have or starting fresh. You can reach a real person at our office in Fort Pierce, and the contact page is the quickest way in.