"Yes, of course you own it" is easy to say and easy to make untrue in the details. Plenty of businesses discover, when they try to leave an agency or move to a new one, that they own the idea of their website but not the parts they'd need to actually take it anywhere.
Here's what ownership means concretely, and how to check you have it.
The five things you need to control
1. The domain name. Registered in your name or your company's, in an account you have the login to. Not "managed by" the agency in their account. If the agency owns the domain, they own your entire online presence — email included.
2. The DNS. The settings that point your domain at your website and your email. Often overlooked, and the thing that causes the most pain in a move. You should have access to wherever your DNS is managed (your registrar, or Cloudflare, etc.).
3. The hosting. The account the site actually runs on — Vercel, Netlify, a server, whatever. In your name, your billing, your login. If it's on the agency's account, your site goes down the day the relationship ends.
4. The code. The actual source of your website, in a repository (usually GitHub) that you own or have admin access to. "We'll send you the files if you leave" is not ownership. Neither is a site you can only edit through the agency's proprietary tool.
5. The analytics and connected accounts. Google Analytics, Search Console, the CMS, any third-party services. All in your accounts, with the agency added as a user — not the reverse.
The contract terms that lock you in
Read for these before you sign:
- Proprietary platform. If the site is built on the agency's own CMS or page builder, you can't take it elsewhere — you can only rebuild. Some agencies do this deliberately; it's a retention strategy, not a technical necessity.
- "Licensed" rather than "owned" code. Check whether you're buying the code or renting the right to use it. It should be yours outright on final payment.
- Hosting bundled with a lock-in. "Free hosting for the first year" often means the site is on their infrastructure and moving it later is a project you pay for.
- No exit clause. A good contract says what happens at the end — everything transferred to you, within a set number of days, at no extra cost.
What a clean handoff looks like
When a project with us finishes, you get:
- The repository transferred to your GitHub, or your team added as admins
- The hosting account in your name, or the project moved into yours
- Domain and DNS confirmed as yours, with you holding the logins
- A short document listing every account, where it is, and how the site is deployed
- The design source files
No proprietary tool in the middle. No "call us to make a change." The point of hiring a studio is to get something built well — not to be unable to leave.
If you're not sure what you have
Ask your current provider, in writing, for: the GitHub repo, the hosting login, confirmation the domain is in your name, and admin access to your analytics. A provider doing good work has no reason to hesitate. Hesitation is the answer.
If you're planning a move and want it done without losing your search rankings in the process, see how we work or tell us your situation.