Who owns my website? It sounds like a simple question, but for many established businesses, the honest answer is far more complicated than it should be. Your website has your name on it, it represents your business every single day, and you almost certainly paid good money for it. But ownership is about more than just having your logo on the homepage. It’s about control, access, and knowing that your most important digital asset is truly yours.
We’ve had this conversation more times than we’d like to admit. A business reaches out to us because something has gone wrong. Maybe they want to make a simple update to their site. Maybe their old web designer has gone quiet. Maybe they’ve grown and they’re ready for something new. And then comes the question that stops everything: “Who actually has the login details?”
If you’re reading this and you’re not entirely sure of the answer, please keep reading. This isn’t about scaremongering. It’s about making sure you’re protected.
There are a handful of scenarios that come up again and again, and they all share one thing in common: a business owner who had no idea they were vulnerable until it was too late.
Your designer has gone quiet. This is perhaps the most common situation. You worked with a freelancer or small studio a few years back, the website went live, everyone was happy, and then life moved on. Fast forward to today and you need to make an update. Maybe your phone number has changed, or you want to add a new service. You realise you have no way to get into the back end of your own website. The person who built it has changed their number, closed their business, or simply stopped responding. Your website is sitting there, live on the internet, and you have no control over it whatsoever.
Your domain name was registered by someone else. Your domain name is your web address, the thing that ends in .co.uk or .com, and it is incredibly valuable. It’s your digital address and, like a physical address, it matters enormously. But many businesses discover that their domain was registered in the name of their old agency or designer, not in their own name. That means the agency effectively holds the keys to your front door. In some cases, businesses have been held to ransom: pay us to make changes, or we’ll simply let the domain lapse. It happens, and it is entirely avoidable.
You’re trapped in a proprietary platform. Some web designers and agencies build websites on platforms that only they can access or maintain. It might be a bespoke CMS (a content management system, which is the tool you use to edit your website), or a platform that requires a specific licence to work with. The site might look beautiful, but you’re entirely dependent on that one provider for every single change, no matter how small. Want to update a product price? Call them. Need to fix a typo? Call them. The moment your relationship with that provider breaks down, you’re stuck.
Nobody ever handed over the login details. Sometimes it’s simpler than all of that. The website was built, launched, and the keys were just never properly handed over. The agency kept hold of the hosting account, the CMS login, and the domain registrar access, and nobody thought to formalise the handover. It’s not always malicious. Sometimes it’s just disorganised. But the effect on your business is the same either way.
When you commission a website, there are several things that should belong to you, full stop. Not your designer. Not your agency. You.
Your domain name should be registered in your own name, through an account only you control. Your hosting account, the service that keeps your website live on the internet, should be in your name, or at the very least you should have full administrator access to it. Your CMS login should be yours, with full admin rights, not a watered-down version that limits what you can do. And your website files, the actual code and assets that make up your site, should be something you can access and, if needed, take elsewhere.
A good web agency will hand all of this over clearly and professionally at the end of a project. They’ll walk you through it, make sure you understand what you’ve got, and leave you feeling empowered rather than dependent. That’s simply how it should work.
At Eighty3, transparency is one of the things we’re most proud of. When we build a website for you, it’s yours. Every login, every file, every account: documented, handed over, and explained. We don’t create dependency, because we don’t believe in it. Our goal is to build something brilliant and then make sure you’re fully in control of it.
We also build on established, widely-supported platforms, which means that even if your circumstances change down the line, you’re never stuck. You can take your site to another provider without starting from scratch, and you’ll never be held to ransom over a proprietary system nobody else can access.
If you’re not sure where you stand with your current website, the best thing you can do is find out now, before it becomes an urgent problem. Start by asking your current provider for full admin access to your domain registrar, your hosting account, and your CMS. If they’re reluctant to hand that over, or if they can’t clearly explain what platform your site is built on, that’s a conversation worth having sooner rather than later.
And if that conversation reveals that your website situation is more complicated than it should be, we’re always happy to have a chat. We help businesses in this situation regularly. Sometimes it’s a straightforward migration, sometimes it’s a full rebuild, and sometimes it just takes a few calls and emails to get things sorted. Either way, we’ll give you a straight, honest assessment of where you stand and what your options are.
You’ve worked hard to build your business. Your website is one of your most important assets. It should be something you own completely, something you control, and something you can be proud of. Not a source of stress or uncertainty.
If you’d like to talk through your current website situation, or if you’re thinking about a new site built the right way from the start, we’d love to hear from you. Take a look at our web design services, or simply get in touch and let’s have a conversation. No pressure, no jargon, just honest advice from a team that genuinely cares.
