Do You Actually Own Your Website?

A guy called us last spring. Nice guy, ran a landscaping crew out of Everett. He had paid a company $99 a month for three years for his website. That is around $3,500. He wanted to move to us, so he asked them for his files. The answer was no. The site was theirs. If he stopped paying, it would go dark. Three and a half thousand dollars, and he owned nothing.

This happens more than it should, and it almost always starts with a deal that sounded great.

"Free website" is not free

When a company offers you a free website, the website is the hook, not the product. The product is the monthly bill that comes after it, often for years. The math is simple and it works in their favor. A site that would cost a few thousand once, sold instead at sixty or a hundred a month, brings in a lot more over time, and it keeps bringing it in whether or not they ever touch the site again.

There is nothing illegal about this. Plenty of these sites are perfectly fine. The trap is not the quality. The trap is what you walk away with when you stop paying, which is usually nothing.

Owning versus renting

These are two completely different arrangements, and the difference matters the day you want to leave.

When you own your website, you have the actual files. The design, the code, the content, all of it, in a form you could hand to any developer on earth. You control the domain name. You control the hosting account, or at least you can move it. If you and your web person part ways, the site comes with you.

When you rent your website, you are paying for access. The site lives on their system, built with their tools, locked to their platform. Stop paying and access ends. You cannot export it in any usable way because it was never designed to leave. You were a tenant the whole time, even though it felt like buying.

Renting is not automatically bad. Some platforms are honest about it, and for certain businesses the convenience is worth it. The problem is the deals that look like ownership and are not, where nobody explains the difference until you try to walk out the door.

How to tell what you actually have

You can usually figure out your situation with a few checks.

• Who owns the domain? Log into your domain registrar. If you cannot, or you do not know where it is registered, or it is under your web company's account, that is a flag. Your domain should be in an account with your name on it.
• Can you get the files? Ask for a full copy of your site. A company that built you something you own will hand it over without drama. A company that gets cagey is telling you the answer.
• What happens if you stop paying? Ask it directly. If the honest answer is "the site goes offline," you are renting, no matter what the contract calls it.
• Can you move your hosting? If you are locked to one host with no way out, you do not have full control.

The questions to ask before you sign

A short conversation up front saves you from the landscaper's situation later. Before you agree to anything, ask these.

First, do I own the website outright when this is done? You want a clear yes, with the files and the domain in your name.

Second, what exactly am I paying for monthly, and what happens to my site if I stop? Hosting and upkeep are legitimate monthly costs. The site itself disappearing when you stop paying is not.

Third, if I want to leave in two years, what do I take with me? The right answer is everything. Your domain, your content, a working copy of the site.

Fourth, is my domain registered in my own account? It should be, and you should have the login.

If a company dodges these or makes them sound complicated, the questions did their job. You found out what you needed to know.

What ownership should look like

Here is the arrangement we think is fair, and it is the one we use. You pay once to have the site built, and you own it. Your domain is in your name. If you want us to host it and keep it updated, that is a separate, optional service with a clear price, and you can cancel it without losing your website. Leave whenever you want and take everything with you. We would rather keep clients because they are happy than because they are stuck.

That is the test, honestly. A company that builds good work does not need to trap you to keep you.

If you are not sure whether you own your current site, that is worth ten minutes to sort out before you spend another dollar on it. We are glad to help you check, and you can always contact us with the details. You can also read how we handle ownership and web design so there are no surprises, or look at our website upkeep options if you want help without the lock-in.