Every so often a new client comes to me and, when I ask for access to their domain, the answer is some version of "I think the last guy has that." Sometimes the last guy replies. Sometimes he doesn't. I wanted to write this up because it is one of the more avoidable problems I see with small business websites, and the fix is mostly a matter of knowing what to ask for.
What You Actually Need to Own
There are two separate things here, and they are often confused.
- Your domain (yourbusiness.com) is the name. It is registered with a registrar, and whoever holds the login to that registrar account controls it — where it points, whether it renews, and whether it gets transferred.
- Your hosting is where the website files and database live. It is a separate account, sometimes with the same company as the domain, often not.
Your email almost always rides on the domain as well. Lose the domain and you do not just lose the website, you lose every address ending in it.
Where It Goes Wrong
The most common failure is not malice, it is convenience. A developer, an agency, or a "we handle everything" website provider registers the domain under their own account because it is faster than walking you through it. The site launches, everyone is happy, and nobody thinks about it again until:
- The developer stops responding, closes up shop, or the relationship ends badly.
- The domain quietly expires because the renewal notice went to an inbox nobody checks anymore.
- You want to move to a new provider and find out you cannot take the site with you (some builder platforms will not export anything usable, and the domain is tied to their account).
At that point you are negotiating for something that should have been yours from the start. In a bad case, years of search rankings tied to that domain go with it.
What Ownership Looks Like in Practice
You do not need to manage any of this yourself. Plenty of my clients have me handle DNS, renewals, and hosting day to day, and that is a perfectly normal arrangement. The difference is whose name is on the account. A short checklist:
- The registrar account is in your name, under an email address you control (not your developer's, and ideally not one that lives on the domain itself in case you ever get locked out).
- Your card is the payment method, and auto-renew is on. A lapsed domain can be picked up by someone else surprisingly fast.
- Your developer gets access as an added user or delegate, not by sharing your login.
- The hosting account is yours on the same terms, and you know how to request a full backup of the site (files and database) at any time.
- You know where your DNS is managed. It is frequently a third place entirely, and it is the one people forget.
I will say this is not a guarantee against every headache. Hosting still goes down, plugins still break, and renewals still get missed by people who own their own accounts (I have seen it more than once). But those are problems you can fix, because you have the keys.
If You Are Not Sure Where You Stand
Look up your domain in a WHOIS tool and see whose name and email are on it. If it is not yours, or it is hidden behind a privacy service you did not set up, that is worth a conversation with whoever built the site. Most of the time they will happily transfer it — it is a five minute task when everyone is on good terms, and a very long one when they are not.
If you would like me and my team to take a look at how your domain and hosting are set up, the contact form at the bottom of this page is the quickest way to reach us. Send over your domain name and who built the site, and I will let you know what I find.
