Do You Own Your Website? What to Check Before You Sign Anything
Every few months I talk to a small business owner in Erie who wants to replace their old website, only to find out they cannot get into it. Sometimes the person who built it five years ago stopped answering emails. Sometimes an agency wants to charge a massive release fee just to hand over the domain name. Other times the business owner thought they bought a website, when in reality they were just renting a page on someone else's account.
Most business owners are not technical, and you should not have to be just to hire someone to build a website. Before you sign a contract with me or any other web designer, there are four separate pieces of a website you need to ask about so you do not get locked out of your own business online.
1. Your Domain Name (The .com Address)
If you remember only one thing from this post, make it this: you should always own your domain name.
Your domain name is your .com address. It costs around $12 to $20 a year through a registrar like Cloudflare, Porkbun, Namecheap, or Google. It is the permanent address that goes on your trucks, your business cards, and your Google Business Profile.
A lot of agencies will offer to register your domain name under their own company account to save you five minutes of setup. That sounds helpful until you decide to leave them three years later and realize they legally control your web address. If they go out of business or get difficult, you can lose the address your customers already know.
Always register your domain name in your own account, under your own email address, with your own credit card on file. A good web designer only needs you to point the settings to their server or grant them temporary delegate access. Even when clients sign up for my monthly lease plan, I make sure their domain stays in their name.
2. Your Google Accounts
Your Google Business Profile, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console should all be tied to a Gmail or business email account that you control.
When you hire someone to build a site or run SEO and Google Ads, you add them as a manager or administrator on those accounts. You never let them create the profile under their personal email without making you the primary owner. If you ever part ways with your designer or marketing person, you should be able to remove their access in two clicks without losing your reviews, your map listing, or your traffic history.
3. Your Photos and Written Copy
Anything that comes directly from your business belongs to you. If you send over photos of your crew, pictures of finished jobs, your logo files, and details about your services, you should be able to take those with you no matter what happens in the future.
Before you sign with a designer, make sure there isn't any weird language in their agreement claiming they own your branding or the photos you provided.
4. The Website Code and Design
This is the part where web designers actually differ, and where a lot of confusion happens because agencies are not honest about how their pricing model works.
There are usually three ways website ownership works in this industry:
- DIY site builders (Wix, Squarespace): You own your text and photos, but you do not own the platform. You cannot download a Squarespace site and move it to another host. If you stop paying them every month, the site turns off.
- Monthly subscription web design: The designer builds and maintains the site for a low monthly fee with little or no money down, and you lease the site for as long as you stay on the plan.
- Lump-sum custom builds: You pay the full build cost upfront, and once the final invoice is paid, the code and design belong to you outright.
Neither the monthly model nor the lump-sum model is bad. The problem only happens when a designer charges you a big upfront fee and still locks you into proprietary software, or sells you a monthly plan while pretending you own the code.
How Ownership Works on My Plans
I offer both a monthly plan and a one-time payment plan on my pricing page, and I draw a clear line between the two so you know exactly what you are signing up for.
If you choose the $3,800 single payment build, you own the website code outright as soon as it is paid for. Because I hand-code my sites in clean HTML and CSS rather than locking them inside a proprietary builder, the finished files can be hosted anywhere on the internet. Most of my lump-sum clients still pay me $25 a month to host and manage the site for them because it is easier than dealing with servers themselves, but if you ever wanted to take your files and move them to your own host, they are 100% yours.
If you choose the $130 a month plan with $0 down, you are leasing the website. I put in all the hours upfront to design and hand-code your site without charging you a build fee, and I include hosting, support, and unlimited edits in that $130 monthly rate. There is a 12-month minimum commitment, and after the first year it goes month to month. If you decide to cancel after your 12 months are up, you walk away with your domain name, your photos, and your Google accounts, and I take the website code offline.
I spell that out in plain English before anyone signs with me. If I let people pay $130 a month for 12 months and keep the code at the end, nobody would ever pay $3,800 upfront. And if someone on the monthly plan grows their business over a year or two and decides they want to buy out their site code later on, we can always work out a buyout price.
Questions to Ask Before You Hire Anyone
Whether you end up working with me or getting quotes from three other designers around Erie, ask these four questions in writing before you pay a deposit:
- Will my domain name be registered in my own name and my own account? (If the answer is no, walk away.)
- Will I be the primary owner on my Google Business Profile and Google Analytics?
- Once the site is live, am I leasing the website month to month, or do I own the code outright?
- If I cancel my hosting or maintenance plan in two years, what happens to my website and how much does it cost to leave?
