Do I own my website?

The three things you need to own

People assume "I paid for it, so it is mine". That is often true of the design work and often not true of the infrastructure it runs on. There are three separate things:

• The domain name — the address. This should be registered in your name or your company name, with you as the registrant, at a registrar you can log into.
• The hosting — the computer the site runs on. You should have an account, or at minimum the ability to get one and move the site there.
• The website itself — the files, the design, the content, the database. You should be able to obtain a full copy on request.

How to check, in about ten minutes

You can do all of this yourself, right now:

• Domain: search for a WHOIS lookup tool and enter your domain. For .co.uk domains, Nominet’s own lookup shows the registrant. If it names an agency rather than you, that is a problem.
• Hosting: do you have a login that shows your files, or only a WordPress admin login? A WordPress login is not hosting access.
• Files: ask your provider to send you a full backup. A reasonable one will do it. A refusal or a long silence is your answer.
• Analytics: is the Google Analytics property in your own Google account, or in theirs?

What to do if the answer is no

First, do not panic and do not immediately fall out with anybody. Most of these situations are ordinary rather than malicious — plenty of small agencies register domains in their own name simply because it was easier at the time.

Ask politely for the domain to be transferred to your own account and for a backup of the site. Most providers will comply. If you get resistance, escalate calmly and in writing.

For a .uk domain, Nominet has a formal process for disputes over who the registrant should be. For hosting, you can usually rebuild elsewhere from a public copy of the site if it comes to it, though that costs money.

The bit worth doing today

Whatever the state of things, do this now: make sure the email address attached to your domain registration is one you control and check regularly. Domains lapse because renewal reminders go to an address nobody has opened since 2019, and a lapsed domain is a genuinely serious problem — losing it can mean losing your email as well as your website.