The short answer to “who owns my website?” is whoever holds each part of it, in their own name and their own account. If a designer built your site, that might not be you, even if you paid for every bit. Under UK copyright law, paying for a design doesn’t automatically make it yours.
Who owns my website? Start by splitting it into parts
When someone asks me who owns their website, they’re usually asking four or five questions at once. A website is a handful of separate things:
- The domain. Your address, like elevantae.com, registered through a company called a registrar.
- The hosting. The computer that keeps the site online.
- The site itself. The design, the words, the photos and the code.
- Everything around it. Your email, Google Business Profile, Google Ads and analytics.
Our own domain is registered at GoDaddy. Its DNS, the settings that tell the internet where your website and email live, is on Cloudflare. Our email runs on Microsoft 365, where I still had to switch on DKIM, an email signing setting, after the DNS records went in. That’s three companies before you count Google, so when someone says they own their website, I ask: which bit?
Having the login isn’t the same as owning it
Every part should sit in the business’s name, on accounts the business controls, with your designer invited in as a guest. If your password opens a dashboard in someone else’s account, they can take it away.
Most services have proper roles for this. Google Business Profile has a primary owner, and managers who can’t add or remove people. In Google Ads, only an admin can change access.
On Cloudflare, only a Super Administrator can manage members, and GoDaddy’s Delegate Access lets someone work on your domains without your password. You hold the top role.
Email is the one I watch hardest, because Microsoft 365 support is the IT side of what I do. A Global Administrator can reset everyone’s password, yours included. Microsoft advises as few of those as possible, plus two or more emergency access accounts, so one lost phone can’t lock the business out.
Who owns my domain name? How to check in the UK
Finding out who owns your website domain takes five minutes.
- For a .uk or .co.uk address, use Nominet’s domain lookup.
- For a .com, use ICANN Lookup.
- Note the registrar, the expiry date and the nameservers.
The owner’s name is usually kept private, so check something else: can you log in to that registrar yourself, and is the domain in your account, in your business’s name? If your answer is “my web designer sorts all that”, ask them in writing which registrar it’s with and whose name it’s in.
Check the renewal date too, because a lapsed domain takes your website and email down with it. And check any renewal letter against that registrar, because official looking invoices from other firms have been around for years.
Who hosts my website, and whose account pays for it?
To find who hosts your website, start with those nameservers. They show who runs your DNS, which is often your host, though not always. Then check your bank statements. If you’ve never paid a hosting bill, the hosting is in somebody else’s account.
If a designer builds your site in their own Wix account, they’re the person Wix deals with. Wix lets an owner transfer a site to another account, and the new owner accepts by email. That’s a few clicks with a helpful designer, and a long wait with one who has gone quiet. Even in your own account, Wix says the site can’t be exported to another host, so leaving means rebuilding.
Builders are the right call for some businesses, as long as you open the account in your business’s name, pay the plan yourself and add the designer as a collaborator. Picture a florist who finds out, two years in, that her site sits in the account of a freelancer who has moved on. Had it been her account from the start, there’d be nothing to chase.
Does paying for a website mean you own the design?
No, and that surprises nearly everyone. Under UK copyright law, whoever creates a piece of work is usually its first owner, not whoever paid for it.
The government’s guidance on copyright ownership says ownership passes to whoever commissioned the work only if that’s agreed in writing. Without that, a court might decide you only have a licence to use the site for its purpose. A proper transfer has to be written down and signed.
I’m not a solicitor, and if you’re in a dispute you need one. Your agreement should say in plain words that the design, content and code pass to you once you’ve paid.
Ours does, though we keep our reusable toolkit and give you a licence to use it for as long as you like. Fonts and stock photos stay with whoever made them, and we tell you about those first. A contract that says nothing at all is the one to worry about.
The accounts that get forgotten
Google Business Profile is the big one, and our very first paying client showed me why. It’s a new café in Wolverhampton, and we run its Google Ads. It has no website yet, so its adverts point at its Business Profile.
When we set the ads up on 12 October, the first login the café gave us couldn’t see the profile. It already existed and was verified, but under another Google account the café used, which someone had set up earlier. A business can easily end up with two Google accounts, and only one owns the profile. Even the street number on it lacks the letter on the sign above the door.
Google allows one primary owner, and a newly added owner waits seven days before they can pass primary ownership on or remove others, so allow time for any handover. Our £110 Google Business Profile setup starts by finding out who controls yours, and keeps it in your account.
Then check Search Console, Analytics, Tag Manager and Google Ads. We run the café’s Google Ads inside its own account, on its own card, and the ad budget goes straight to Google. If we ever part ways, nothing needs handing back.
You can only check what you can open
Detailing Sanctuary, my own car detailing business, taught me this. Its Google Ads and Tag Manager are in my name, so when I audited them on 24 September 2026 I could open every setting. Over about a year it had spent a little over four and a half thousand pounds on 8,387 clicks.
The goal the account was bidding towards was a conversion tag with no trigger, so it had never fired once. One phone tap was counted twice. An enquiry fired whenever the thank you page loaded, so bookmarks and search engine robots counted. The tracking is fixed, but the campaigns haven’t been restarted, so there’s no result to report.
With only a monthly summary from an agency, you’d never spot faults like these. Keep Google Ads, Tag Manager and Analytics in your name, with you as admin, even when someone else runs them.
What to get in writing before you pay a deposit
Before any money moves, I’d want six things in writing:
- The domain is in your business’s name, at a registrar where you have your own login.
- The hosting is in your name, or you know whose it is and how the site comes out.
- The design, content and code pass to you once you’ve paid, in those words.
- What happens if you stop paying, especially on a monthly deal. Here’s how to tell a rented pay monthly website from one you own.
- What you get if you leave: the files, the logins and help moving.
- Your Google Business Profile, Google Ads, Analytics and email admin sit in your accounts, with the designer as a user.
Then ask your designer one question: if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, could someone else get into my site? A good designer answers straight away. If they get cagey about the domain, I’d walk away. I can’t think of a good reason for a supplier to register your business name in their own.
If your web designer owns your domain
Stay calm and polite, because you need their help more than you need to win. Find the registrar with the lookup, then ask the designer in writing to move the domain into your name. If they’ve stopped answering, read what to do when your web designer isn’t responding.
- A .uk domain. The registrar can often change the registrant. If not, the current registrant can start a transfer in Nominet Online Services for £10 plus VAT, and the new registrant has five days to accept.
- A .com. A change of owner normally puts a 60 day lock on moving registrar, unless the registrar lets you opt out first.
- Google Business Profile. Request access. The owner gets three days to reply.
- Search Console. Verify the site yourself. A removed owner can get back in if their verification code stays on the site.
If they won’t budge on a .uk name, Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service starts with free mediation, and a paid expert decision costs several hundred pounds. Past that, you need a solicitor. I’m not one, and this isn’t legal advice.
How ownership works with us
Once a website we design and build for you is paid for, it’s yours: the design, the content, the code and the domain. The domain stays in your name, at your registrar, and hosting runs on a Cloudflare account in your name that we manage. Pay monthly after a £200 deposit, and the site is yours once the last payment clears.
One catch: while those payments run, a payment more than a week late switches the site off until it’s paid. It comes back on with no reconnection fee, though that payment carries a one off 10% charge. Your domain and data stay yours either way.
Our sites are hand coded, with no drag and drop editor. Changes come through a care plan allowance, or at £60 an hour in 15 minute steps, quoted first. Some people would rather have an editor, and that’s fair.
If you leave, we hand over everything needed to host the site elsewhere and talk your new provider through it. Every figure is on our pricing page.
Questions people ask about owning their website
Do I own my domain name or just rent it?
You register a domain for a set period and renew it, so watch the expiry date. If it’s in your name at a registrar you can log in to, you can keep it or move it. A .com can be locked for 60 days after a change of owner.
How do I find out who my hosting company and domain registrar are?
Look up your domain with Nominet (.uk) or ICANN Lookup (.com). That shows the registrar, and the nameservers point towards the host.
Can my web designer switch off my website or lock me out if we fall out?
If the hosting, domain or builder account is in their name, then in practice, yes. So keep each part in your own accounts, and make sure your contract says when, if ever, the site can be switched off.
What happens if the company that built and hosts my website closes down?
If the domain and hosting are in your name, you find someone new and carry on. If they’re in the company’s name, the site can go offline once the bills stop, and getting the domain back takes time.
Where to start
Do the domain lookup tonight, and you’ll know where you stand. If you’d like to see what a site of your own could look like, in your name from day one, we’ll make you a free concept within two working days of a 20 minute call. It’s yours to keep looking at, whatever you decide.