What you own
You own it. Not a license to use it.
The usual arrangement is that the person who built your website quietly owns your website. The domain is in their account, the files are on their system, and leaving means starting again from nothing. We do the opposite, on purpose, and this page is the whole of it in writing.
Every part of it, and whose name it is in
A handful of things get created for your business along the way. Here is what each one is, who it belongs to while you are with us, and what happens to it the day you decide to go somewhere else.
Your domain name
The address people type to reach you — yourbusiness.com. Registered in your name, your business, your email address, on day one.
Yours from the start
Nothing to move. It is already yours and it stays yours. We step off the account.
Your email, if you take it
An optional extra: a real Google account on your own domain, so you write to customers from you@yourbusiness.com instead of a Gmail address with numbers in it. Plenty of people keep the address they already have instead, and that is fine.
Your business, with us as the administrator
We make you the owner of the account and remove ourselves. You move the billing to your own card and the mailbox carries on uninterrupted — same address, same inbox, nothing lost.
The website itself
Every file the site is made of — the pages, the styling, the images, the whole build.
Yours
Sent to you as a single folder that any web developer can pick up and host anywhere. No proprietary format and nothing locked to us.
The words and the photographs
The copy we wrote for you and the images on the site, including anything we made for it.
Yours, outright
They are about your business, so they leave with your business. Use them anywhere — a new site, a brochure, a van.
Your Google Business Profile
The listing with your map pin, hours and reviews. It is the single biggest thing for showing up in local searches.
Yours; it always was
It was never ours to hand back. We simply remove our access from it.
Search Console and Analytics
The two Google accounts that show what people searched to find you and what they did once they arrived.
Yours, with us added on
Ownership passes to you with the history intact, and we take ourselves off. You keep the data.
Your logo and brand files
If you bought a style guide: the logo in every format, the colors, the typefaces and the print-ready business cards.
Yours, outright, the day we deliver them
Nothing to do. You were sent the original source files at delivery, not just flattened images.
The handover
How ownership actually changes hands
Most of it happens at the beginning rather than the end, which is the point. There is no final transfer to negotiate because there was never a transfer to make.
- Day one
The domain goes in your name
Before a single page is designed. Your name, your business, your email on the registration — not ours held on your behalf. That is the difference between owning something and being allowed to use it, and it is worth getting right at the start rather than promising to sort out later.
- Launch day
You get the Ownership Record
A one-page document listing every account your business now has, what each one is for, who it is registered to, and where to sign in. Your domain, your Business Profile, Search Console, Analytics, and your email if you took it. Keep it with your insurance papers. If you never speak to us again, that page is enough for anyone else to take over.
- Any time you ask
We prove it, on the phone
Ring us and we will sign in with you and show you the registration with your name on it. No one should have to take this on trust, and you do not need to be leaving to want to see it.
- If you leave
Five business days, no fee
You tell us you are going. Within five business days we send the complete site as a folder, pass over Search Console and Analytics, transfer the email account if you have one with us, and remove our access from everything. We do not hold the site hostage while an invoice is settled, and there is nothing to sign to get any of it. Then we point your domain wherever you tell us to.
The other half of the answer
What we do hold, and why
A promise that everything is yours is worth very little without the list of exceptions next to it. There are two, they are both about keeping the thing running, and neither one stops you leaving.
The hosting account
Your site sits on our hosting rather than an account in your name, and that is deliberate — it is most of what the monthly fee buys you. It means you never see a bill from a hosting company, never get an expiry warning, and never have to work out why the site went down at 2am. Your site is a folder of ordinary files, so moving it off us is a copy-and-paste job, not a rebuild.
Administrator access to your email, if you have it with us
If you took the email add-on, we set the mailbox up and keep it working, which needs administrator rights. Ask and we will make you an administrator alongside us on the same day — plenty of customers do. If you leave, the whole account becomes yours and you carry on with the same address.
Nothing else
There is no third thing. We do not register your domain to ourselves, hold your logo files back until you have paid, keep your customer enquiries on our system, or put our name in your footer. If something is about your business, it is yours.
The Ownership Record
The document you get on launch day. One page, no jargon, and enough on its own for anyone else to take over from us.
- Your domain — where it is registered and in whose name
- Your email account, if you took one, and how to sign in
- Your Google Business Profile
- Search Console and Analytics
- Where the site files live and how to get a copy
- What we can access, and how to remove us
Ask for a fresh copy any time. Most people file it and never think about it again, which is the idea.
Being honest about it
Why we would set it up this way
Locking people in is a bad business to be in
If the only reason you are still paying us is that leaving would cost you your website and your email address, then we have stopped earning it. We would rather find out. A customer who stays because it is easier to stay is a customer who is already half gone.
It makes the first conversation shorter
Nearly everyone who has been burned once asks the ownership question within the first ten minutes, and they are right to. Answering it before they ask — in writing, on a page they can read at eleven at night without us there — saves everybody a great deal of circling.
It costs us nothing to be straight about
Registering your domain in your name takes the same five minutes as registering it in ours. Handing over a folder of files takes an hour. None of this is a concession we are making — it is just the honest version of the same work, and the honest version is easier to sell.
So what is the $24.99 a month for?
Fair question, and it deserves a better answer than the word “maintenance.” Part of it is bills we pay on your behalf and at cost — your domain renews every year, the certificate has to stay valid, the site has to sit somewhere that stays up. The rest is the work: the edits you send us, the security updates, the backups, and being someone who picks up the phone.
None of it is a fee for permission to use your own website. If you stop paying it, you still own everything on this page.
Ask us the awkward version of the question
“What exactly happens if I fire you in a year?” is a good question to ask before you hire anyone, and we would rather answer it now than have you wondering. $500 to build, $24.99 a month, no contract.