Do I own my website? Website ownership, asset by asset

Most guides to this question are written by web design agencies, and most of them say roughly the same thing: you own your content, you might not own the design, and you should check WHOIS to see who owns your domain. That was decent advice in 2017. Two parts of it no longer work, one part was never quite right, and none of it covers the accounts that a local business actually depends on.

So we went and measured it. We read the published terms of 30 US website providers, clause by clause, to see what they say you own and what happens when you leave. We checked the domains and platforms of 44 ordinary local businesses. Then we went back to the primary sources, the US Copyright Office, ICANN and Google’s own help pages, for every rule on this page.

We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. It is the practical version, sourced to the rules themselves, and it covers US law and the US market.

What does a website actually consist of?

The confusion starts with treating “the website” as one object. It is a bundle of separate assets, each with its own owner, and they are frequently held by different people. One of them is a legal right. Most of them are accounts. Whoever can log in to the account usually has more practical control than whoever holds the copyright.

Notice how few of these are copyright questions. The domain, the registrar account, DNS, hosting, email and the three Google accounts are all questions of whose name is on an account and who holds the password. That is good news, because access is much easier to check and to fix than copyright is.

What do website providers’ own terms say you own?

Rather than repeat what agencies say in blog posts, we read what they put in writing. On 5 October 2026 we went through the published terms of service, service agreements and FAQs of 30 US providers that sell websites to small businesses: 11 that charge monthly, 8 agencies that charge a one-time fee, and 11 done-for-you services and industry platforms, including several of the large national ones. Every finding below is coded from the provider’s own page, and every quote we relied on was checked word for word against that page.

Our own reading of 30 providers’ published terms, checked 5 October 2026. Providers are not named. Four of the thirteen in the “provider keeps it” row are monthly FAQs that say you do not keep the site when you cancel, without a formal ownership clause. Full method and coding rules in our research notes.

Three patterns stand out.

Only 9 of 30 say the client ends up owning the design and code, and five of those nine attach a condition: ownership arrives on payment in full, or at the end of a fixed contract. That condition is reasonable. It does mean that until the last invoice is paid, the site is not yours, whatever it feels like.

The billing model predicts the answer. All four one-time agencies that address ownership eventually hand it over. Seven of the eleven monthly providers keep it. That is not a moral failing on their part. If nobody paid a build invoice, the provider carried the cost of the build, and keeping the site is how they recover it. But it is the single most important thing to know before signing a monthly plan, and most buyers find it out when they try to leave.

“All rights” does not always mean all rights. One large done-for-you provider transfers “all rights and ownership of the Design” to the client. The same agreement keeps the templates and themes the design is built on, along with their source code, and treats moving the site to another host as a breach. On paper you own the design. In practice it only works in their system. That is a legitimate way to run a business, and it is also exactly the kind of clause nobody reads.

The domain row is the one that worries us most. 24 of 30 providers do not say whose name your domain is registered in. It is the oldest and least replaceable asset you have, and four in five of these agreements are silent on it. Two of the six that do say register it in their own name.

What do ordinary local businesses actually run on?

Terms tell you what providers offer. To see what businesses actually end up with, we went back to the 44 US local business websites from our September readability study: accountants, dentists, landscapers, HVAC firms, roofers, electricians, plumbers and pest control companies, in eight mid-size markets. For each one we looked up the domain in the public registration database, and read the page source to see which platform serves the site.

Our own measurement. Domain data from the public RDAP registration database, one lookup per domain. Platform identified from public page source, so nine sites could not be classified. One domain returned no record. No business is named.

Three findings matter here.

The domain is the oldest thing these businesses have online. The median domain was registered fifteen years ago, and nine predate 2005. A small business site is typically rebuilt every few years, so the domain has usually outlived several websites and several designers. It is the one asset that carries through every rebuild, which is why it should never sit in anybody else’s account.

You cannot check domain ownership from outside any more. In all 43 lookups that returned a record, the registrant’s name was hidden. We explain why in the domain section. It means the most repeated piece of advice on this subject, “look yourself up in WHOIS”, tells you almost nothing.

Eight of the 44 run on a vendor platform whose own terms say the vendor owns the website. Six of the nine accounting firms in the sample are among them. Five of those six use the same vendor, whose agreement says the customer’s website, “including all graphical content and related HTML coding”, is the vendor’s property, and the customer has “no rights to the website beyond the terms of its subscription”. A dental platform publishes the same clause word for word.

Who owns the design and code of a website?

Under US copyright law, copyright “vests initially in the author or authors of the work”. For a website, the author is whoever designed and wrote the code. Paying for the work does not change that by itself. Without something in writing, the designer generally keeps the copyright and you hold an implied licence to use what was made for you.

17 U.S.C. 201(a), via Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

There are two ways to change the default, and one of them is widely misunderstood.

Why “work made for hire” usually does not work for a website

Several of the most cited articles on this question, including one from a law firm, advise writing “work for hire” into the contract so the client owns the result. Google’s AI answers for two of these queries now repeat that advice. For a website built by an outside designer, it is not reliable.

The Copyright Office is specific about this. A work is made for hire in two cases. The first is work made by an employee within the scope of their job, which an independent designer or agency is not. The second is a commissioned work, and that only qualifies if it falls into one of nine listed categories and both parties sign a written agreement saying it is a work made for hire. In the Copyright Office’s words, if a work fails any of those requirements, “it is not a work made for hire.”

Categories from US Copyright Office, Circular 30: Works Made for Hire. Whether a particular site could be argued into one of them is a question for a lawyer, which is exactly why it is not a dependable route.

What does work: a signed assignment

The dependable route is a written assignment, a clause in which the designer transfers the copyright to you, usually on payment in full. Federal law says a transfer of copyright “is not valid unless” it is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights. An email saying “of course it’s yours” is pleasant, and it is not that.

17 U.S.C. 204(a), via Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

Many contracts sensibly include both: a work made for hire statement, and a backup assignment in case the first does not apply. If yours has only the first, ask for the second.

Ownership, licence, or something in between

In practice, the provider terms we read fell into four shapes, and it helps to know which one you are being offered.

The second row is the most common fair arrangement and the most commonly misread. Agencies reuse their own frameworks across clients, which is part of why their prices are affordable. A good contract lets them keep the framework and gives you a permanent licence to use it in your site. A contract that keeps the framework and says nothing about your licence leaves you owning a design that may not run anywhere else.

Who owns the content, photos, fonts and plugins?

The text you wrote is yours. So are the photos you took. Both are your own work, and handing them to a designer to put on the site does not transfer them. If the designer wrote the copy for you, the copyright rules above apply to it too, so it belongs in the assignment.

The harder part is everything that was licensed rather than made. Stock photos, paid fonts, premium themes and plugins are all bought under licence, and a licence belongs to whoever bought it. Thirteen of the 30 providers whose terms we read mention these items, and most of them say the licences do not transfer to you.

None of this is usually expensive to fix. A premium plugin licence is typically a modest yearly fee, and most fonts have a free equivalent. The point is to know before you move, so the cost appears in the plan rather than as a broken page the week after.

Who owns your domain name, in 2026?

Strictly, nobody owns a domain. You register it for a period, and the person or organization the registration is in is what ICANN calls the Registered Name Holder. That holder has the rights: to renew it, to move it, and to decide where it points. Letting someone else run it for you does not change who the holder is. ICANN’s registrar agreement says a holder who licenses use of the domain to someone else “is nonetheless the Registered Name Holder of record”.

Three things have changed since most guides to this were written.

1. The registrant’s name is now hidden

ICANN’s Registration Data Policy, in force since 21 August 2025, lets registrars redact the registrant’s name and contact details from public lookups, requires it where privacy law applies, and makes publishing them something the registrant has to consent to. In practice almost every registrar now hides them. That matches what we found: the registrant was hidden in all 43 of our lookups. So the classic advice, look yourself up in WHOIS and see whose name is there, now usually shows a redacted field and tells you nothing.

What a public lookup still shows is useful: the registrar, the creation and expiry dates, the lock status and the nameservers. Use ICANN Lookup to find which registrar holds your domain. Then the real check is whether you can log in to an account at that registrar which holds it.

2. The organization field decides who the holder is

If a registration lists an organization, that organization is the holder. The Registration Data Policy requires registrars to tell anyone filling in that field: “The Registrant Organization will be considered the Registered Name Holder.” That cuts both ways. If your business name is in that field, the domain is your business’s, even if someone else’s personal name appears as the contact. If an agency’s name is in that field, the domain is legally the agency’s, even if you have been paying for it.

ICANN, Registration Data Policy, and the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

3. Moving a domain has rules and waiting periods

ICANN, Transfer Policy, version updated 21 February 2024. ICANN’s Board adopted changes in June 2026 that will shorten several of these waiting periods and remove the change of registrant lock, but they had no effective date when we checked in October 2026, so the rules above still apply.

The practical sequence, then: find the registrar with ICANN Lookup, try to log in or reset the password with your own email, and if the domain is in someone else’s account, ask the holder in writing to move it into yours. If it is in someone else’s name, the holder has to make the change, so that is the person to ask.

Who controls the hosting, DNS and email?

These three are the least discussed and, day to day, the most powerful. Whoever controls them can take the site offline, move it, or stop your email, regardless of who owns the copyright.

Having the site in the agency’s hosting account is common and not a problem in itself. Plenty of good agencies work that way, and it can be cheaper. It only becomes a problem if there is no agreed way out. The fix is one sentence in the contract: a full backup of files and database, on request, within a set number of days.

Email deserves its own mention because it is the one people forget. Your email addresses run on the domain, but the mailboxes themselves live in a separate account, and DNS records point mail to it. If the agency set up that account, ask to be made its administrator, or move the mailboxes into an account you own.

Who owns your Google Analytics, Search Console and Business Profile?

Each of these has its own owner model, and an agency that holds the top role can lock you out of years of data or, worse, your map listing. None of them is in the website’s code, so no contract clause about “the website” reliably covers them. Each needs checking on its own.

From Google’s help pages: Analytics roles, Search Console permissions, Business Profile owners and managers.

The Search Console trap is worth spelling out. Search Console proves ownership with a token: a file on the site, a tag in the page, or a record in DNS. Google’s help page says that as long as the token remains, a deleted owner can re-verify. So when an agency leaves, removing them as a user is not enough. Remove their verification token too.

For a local business, the Business Profile is arguably worth more than the website. It is the map listing, the reviews and the phone number customers see first, and its primary owner can delete it. If your agency created it, ask to be made primary owner, and remember the seven day wait when you plan the timing. How the profile and the site work together is in do I need a website if I have a Google Business Profile.

What if the site is on Wix, Squarespace or an industry platform?

On a site builder, ownership is decided by the account. Wix’s help centre says the owner of a site “is the owner of the Wix account under which the content was created”, and Squarespace lets only the current site owner transfer it. If your designer built the site in their own account, they own it until they transfer it to yours. Moving is harder than owning: Wix sites cannot be hosted anywhere else at all, Squarespace exports only part of a site, and Webflow’s code export, on paid plans only, leaves the CMS content behind. The detail, platform by platform, is in who owns a Wix, Squarespace or Webflow site.

Industry platforms are the case nobody writes about. Dental, legal, accounting and trade businesses are often sold a website as part of a bundle with their client portal, booking system or marketing. As our sample showed, some of those vendors’ terms keep the site, and some hand everything over. Before you sign with one, or if you already have, ask four questions:

1. If I cancel, what do I take with me: files, content, or nothing?
2. Is the domain registered in my business’s name, in an account I can log in to?
3. Who is the primary owner of my Business Profile and the administrator of my Analytics?
4. Is there a price to buy the site outright, and is it written down?

If the answer to the first is “nothing”, you can still make a sensible decision. It just means the real cost of leaving is a rebuild, and that belongs in the comparison when you weigh the platform against the alternatives.

Do you own your website if you pay monthly?

It depends entirely on the terms, not the billing. A monthly fee does not mean you are renting, and a one-time fee does not guarantee you own anything. What the 30 providers’ terms show is that the two tend to go together, which is why it is worth asking.

Our own reading of published terms, 5 October 2026. Of all 30 providers, two charge a fee to take the site or domain with you, from $30 for a domain transfer to $5,000 to buy the copyright of a subscription site. Three say there is no buyout at all. Six charge for leaving inside a minimum term.

Seven of eleven leave you without a working site. That can be a perfectly good deal, if the monthly fee is low and you understood it at the start. It is a bad one if you discover it after three years and $6,000. Two questions settle it before you sign:

1. “If I cancelled next month, what would I walk away with?”
2. “Is the price to buy the site outright written down, and does it fall the longer I stay?”

The full cost comparison between the two models, over three years, is in website subscription vs paying once, and the floor of what you genuinely have to pay every month is in do you have to pay monthly for a website.

What should the contract say about ownership?

Almost every scenario on this page is solved by a few sentences agreed before the work starts, when nobody minds discussing it. These are the clauses to ask for, in plain English. The wording to adapt, and what free contract templates leave out, is in what a web design contract should say.

If you only get one of these agreed, make it the domain. Arguments over who holds the copyright are uncommon on small sites. A domain sitting in somebody else’s account is common, and it is the one asset that cannot be rebuilt.

How do you check who owns your website?

This is the part to do today. Most checks take a couple of minutes each, and none needs anyone’s permission. Work down the list and note anything that is not in your name.

What if something is in the wrong name?

Most of this is recoverable, and most designers are reasonable. Ask in writing, ask politely, and ask for everything in one message so it is clear what you want. In rough order of urgency:

1. Take a backup first, while relations are good. Files, database and content.
2. Domain. Ask the holder to move it into an account you control, or for the transfer code if you are moving registrar. Watch for the 60 day locks.
3. Google accounts. Ask to be made Administrator in Analytics, a verified owner in Search Console and primary owner of the Business Profile. Then remove their tokens and roles.
4. Email and DNS. Get administrator access, or move them to accounts you own.
5. Hosting. Move to your own account once you have the backup.
6. Design and code. Ask for a signed assignment. If the relationship is fine this is usually uncontroversial. If it is not, this is where a lawyer earns their fee.

If the designer has stopped replying, or the relationship has broken down, the full sequence, including how to escalate with the registrar, is in how to get your website back.

Common questions