Who owns my website and domain, and can I take it with me?

Several different things get called “my website”, and a contract can give you one and not the others. Check each one separately.

Check the accounts too. On a Google Business Profile, Google tells owners “you have full control over the profile” and that they can add or remove users. Managers can do almost everything else but “can't add or remove users or remove the profile”. In Google Analytics, you “need to have the Administrator role” to add or change users. If your designer is the only owner or administrator, you are a guest in your own accounts. Ask to be made owner (or primary owner) of each, including the hosting and registrar accounts.

1. Find who you pay for it. Search your email for a domain renewal notice or invoice. That company is your registrar, or a reseller of one.
2. Log in to that account and open the domain. Check the registrant (owner) name is you or your business, spelt exactly as your company is registered.
3. Look it up at rdap.nominet.uk. Nominet, which runs .uk, is replacing the old WHOIS lookup with RDAP. The result shows the registrar or reseller that manages the domain, which may be your designer's supplier rather than you. It shows the owner's name only if they opted in, so a blank owner does not mean it is not yours.
4. For a .com (or another non-.uk ending), look it up at lookup.icann.org, ICANN's free lookup tool. It shows "the name of the registrar sponsoring the domain name's registration". The owner's details are often hidden: ICANN says not all registration data has to be returned, and a hidden field carries a “redacted” label. As with .uk, a hidden owner does not mean it is not yours.
5. If you cannot log in, ask whoever set it up to confirm in writing that you are the registrant. If you are not, ask them to change it to you.
6. Once it is yours, keep the login somewhere safe and switch on auto-renew. A lapsed domain takes your website and email with it.

Keeping a .co.uk is cheap. Krystal, for example, charges £7.99 a year to register and renew, ex VAT. A domain held hostage costs far more than that in lost email and links.

First check what they actually hold. If you are the named registrant and they only manage the account, it is a smaller job: ask for the login, or ask them to move the domain to a registrar account in your name. If they are the registrant, the registrant has to be changed to you as well.

1. Ask in writing. Name the domain, the registrar account you want it moved to, and a date.
2. For a .uk domain, the move between registrars is done today by changing the domain's tag (the “IPS tag”) to the new registrar's. Nominet says that from Tuesday 9 February 2027 this changes: the current registrar gives the registrant a Transfer Authorisation Code, valid for 14 days, to pass to the new one.
3. Ask for the registrant name to be corrected to you or your company at the same time.
4. Watch the renewal date. If the domain lapses during a disagreement, your website and email go with it, so get it renewed first.
5. If they refuse, Nominet runs a Dispute Resolution Service for .uk names. Its published fee schedule (updated 9 April 2026) lists £200 for a summary decision and £750 for a full expert decision. Take legal advice before you use it.

Often, yes, unless your contract says otherwise. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 11 says "The author of a work is the first owner of any copyright in it". Where the work is made by an employee in the course of employment, "his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work subject to any agreement to the contrary". So the words and design a freelancer writes belong to the freelancer, and work by an agency's staff belongs to the agency. By default, neither belongs to you as the client.

Paying the invoice does not by itself change that. Section 90(3) says "An assignment of copyright is not effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor". The assignor is the designer or agency handing the copyright over.

• Best: a written assignment, signed by or on behalf of the designer or agency, of the copyright in the design, code and words they create for you.
• At least: a written licence that lets you use, change and move the design, code and words, including to another host or designer.
• Ask which parts are someone else's, such as a bought theme, stock photos or fonts, and what licence covers them.

Ask before work starts; it is much harder to agree once there is a dispute. This page gives general information and does not count as legal advice. If you are already in a dispute over copyright, take legal advice.

Wix's terms say you own your content. The site is a different matter. Wix says a site “needs to be hosted and operated on Wix's servers” and that its system “does not support external hosting”. Wix has no way to export the site itself, so most words and photos are copied across by hand and the site is rebuilt elsewhere.

You can use your own domain on Wix, but connecting it needs a paid plan. UK plans start at £9 a month billed annually, going by ExpertSure, plus VAT: Wix's plans page says “Prices do not include applicable taxes”. If you bought the domain through Wix, check whose name it is registered in, using the steps above.

Squarespace lets you export part of a site in a format WordPress can read: layout pages, one blog, text and image blocks, and gallery pages on older (7.0) sites. Store, portfolio, index and calendar pages, page-specific headers, footers and sidebars, extra blogs, product, video and audio blocks, and all your styling and custom CSS stay behind. Download your images before you cancel; they may not come across on their own.

Shopify lets you download your theme file, which it emails as a .zip without your products, pages, blog posts or images. Products export to a spreadsheet file, but that also leaves out the images. We found no Shopify page offering a full-site export, so moving a shop means rebuilding it.

No. A one-off build can be yours outright, though hosting and the domain still cost something each year (running costs). With a pay-monthly website, ownership depends on the provider's terms, and some, such as Opace and Yoohoo Creative, only pass it to you after a 12-month term: our guide to whether you have to pay monthly for a website compares them.

You cannot move a Wix site itself, and Squarespace and Shopify only let part of a site out. What you can move is the domain, the words and the photos. In practice moving means rebuilding, which our guide to website redesign costs prices; redesign vs a new website helps you decide how far to go.

1. Make sure the domain is in your name. If you bought it through the builder, move it to a registrar account in your name before you cancel; the builder's help pages explain how.
2. List every page address on the old site. You need these for redirects.
3. Save the content. On Wix, copy the words and download the photos by hand. On Squarespace, run the export and download the images. On Shopify, export the products and save the images separately.
4. Build the new site and set up a redirect from every old page address to its new one, so visitors and Google find the right page.
5. Point the domain at the new site, then test every form, phone link and email address.
6. Only then cancel the old plan.

If pages go missing from Google after the move, our guide to a website not showing on Google explains how to check.

• Whose name will the domain be registered in?
• Whose name is the hosting account in, and will I have the login?
• Can I move the site to another host if I leave? Is there a fee?
• Who owns the copyright in the design, code, words and photos you create for me? Will you assign it to me in writing?
• Will I have the owner role, above manager or user, on my Google Business Profile, analytics and hosting accounts?
• What happens to the site if I stop paying you?

Ask these alongside the price. Our guide to how much web designers charge has a full checklist of what a quote should spell out.

Coltura's answers: you own the website, the domain, the content and every account we set up, in your name from day one, with nothing held back under licence. If you stop working with us, you take it all and it keeps working. Growth Care at £149 a month is optional (cancel any time, with a month's notice), or you can host the site yourself. The build is a fixed £1,400; see what the Growth Website includes.

Not owning the site outright only matters on the day you want to leave. If your builder site brings in work, you like editing it yourself and the monthly cost suits you, staying is a sensible choice. Just make sure the domain is in your name and keep copies of your words and photos.

The same goes for a pay-monthly plan you are happy with. Know your term, your notice period and what you can take. Our Wix vs custom websites guide covers when it is worth moving.