Who owns your website? A checklist before you hire

Most business owners only find out who owns their website when something goes wrong. The designer stops replying. The agency closes. A renewal email lands in an inbox nobody checks and the domain lapses. Suddenly the site, the email and years of search rankings belong to someone else, or to nobody.

This is avoidable. Before you hire anyone, know what “owning your website” means, and get it in writing.

Why ownership is the first question

A website isn’t one thing. It’s a domain, hosting, code or a content management system, a pile of images and text, a brand, an email setup, an analytics account and a set of third-party tools. Each piece has an account, and each account has an owner.

If the person who built the site holds those accounts, you’re renting your own business. That might be fine while the relationship is good. It stops being fine the day you want to leave, and that’s exactly when you have the least leverage.

The domain

The domain is the most important thing you own online. Your website and usually your email depend on it.

• The registrant should be your business, not your designer, not an employee.
• The registrar account should be yours, with your business email as the contact, so renewal notices reach you.
• Turn on auto-renew and keep the payment card current. Lapsed domains can be picked up by someone else.
• For a .ca domain, the registrant has to meet CIRA’s Canadian Presence Requirements, such as being a Canadian business or a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. Register it to the entity that actually qualifies.

DNS and email

DNS is the set of records that tells the internet where your website and email live. Whoever controls it can point your domain anywhere.

• Know where your DNS is managed (often at the registrar, sometimes at a host or a service like Cloudflare) and make sure that account is yours.
• Before anyone moves your website, make sure they copy your email records. Moving DNS carelessly is a classic way to take a business’s email offline for a day.
• Use email addresses on your own domain, in an email account you pay for and control.

Hosting

Hosting is where the site’s files and database actually run.

• Best: a hosting account in your business’s name, paid by you, with your designer added as a user.
• Acceptable: your designer hosts it, with a written promise that you can get a complete copy of the site and its data and move it whenever you like.
• Avoid: hosting you can’t see, can’t get a copy from, and can’t leave without a fee or a favour.

The code and the content management system

Copyright

Here’s the part most people miss. In Canada, the author of a work is generally the first owner of the copyright in it. A website built by an outside designer or agency (not your employee) can belong to them unless they transfer it to you, and under the Copyright Act an assignment is only valid if it’s in writing and signed by the owner.

So the contract should say, plainly, that copyright in the work made for you transfers to your business once it’s paid for. If the designer reuses their own tools or code across clients, they may give you a licence for those parts instead. That’s normal, as long as the licence is permanent and lets you keep running, editing and moving the site.

Logins

• You should have an owner or administrator login to the content management system, not just an editor account.
• If the site uses paid themes, plugins or components, ask whose name the licences are in, and make sure renewals won’t stop when the designer stops paying.
• For custom-built sites, ask for the source code in a repository you own, or at least a full copy at handover.

Brand files, photos and fonts

• Logos and brand assets should come to you as source files (vector formats like AI, EPS, PDF or SVG), not only as PNGs pulled off the site.
• Fonts are licensed, not owned. Find out which fonts the brand uses and whether the licence covers your website, print and anything else you’ll use them for.
• Photos and video shot for you should be yours to use, in writing. Stock images come with licence terms; know where they came from and what the licence allows.

Analytics, search and listings

The data your site produces is yours too, and it gets more valuable every year.

• Analytics: you should be an administrator on your analytics account, not just a viewer.
• Search Console: you should be a verified owner of your site in Google Search Console, which holds your search performance history.
• Google Business Profile and other listings: owned by your business, with your designer as a manager if needed.

Third-party tools

Booking systems, forms, newsletter tools, payment processors and live chat all hold customer data. Each account should be in your business’s name, billed to you, with the designer invited as a user. Payment processors in particular should never be under someone else’s account.

Questions to ask before you sign

Ask any web designer or agency these, and get the answers in the proposal or contract:

1. Whose name will the domain, hosting and every account be in?
2. Will I have owner or administrator access to everything from the start?
3. Does copyright in the work transfer to my business, in writing, once I’ve paid? What is licensed instead?
4. What do I get at handover? (Logins, source files, brand files, documentation.)
5. If I leave, what does it cost and how long does it take to get a full copy of my site?
6. Are there any ongoing fees I can’t cancel without losing the site?

A good designer will answer all six without hesitating. If the answers are vague, that’s your answer.

None of this is about distrusting your designer. It’s about making sure your business keeps working no matter what happens to anyone you hire, including us.