Ask most business owners in Canterbury, Whitstable or Herne Bay who owns their website and they’ll say “I do, I paid for it.” Then ask where the domain is registered, who holds the hosting login, and whether the contract actually assigns them the design — and the confident answer disappears. Ownership of a website isn’t one thing. It’s four or five separate things, and it’s common for a local business to control none of them. This guide explains what website ownership really means in the UK, how to check where you stand in ten minutes, and what to do if your web designer has quietly ended up holding the keys.
Why “I paid for it” isn’t enough
Paying for a website doesn’t automatically make it yours. Under UK copyright law, the person who creates a design or writes code owns the copyright to it unless a written agreement says otherwise. If your contract with a designer never mentioned ownership, the default position favours the designer, not you.
The same applies to the practical side. If your agency registered the domain, set up the hosting and holds the only admin login, they don’t need to be difficult to cause a problem — they just need to close down, retire, stop answering emails or fall out with you. Every web designer in Kent has picked up a client whose previous designer disappeared — and the site, domain or both went with them.
The good news is that this is easy to fix once you know which pieces to check.
The five things that make up website ownership
Think of your website as a bundle of separate assets. You need to know who controls each one.
1. The domain name
This is the single most important asset, and the one most often registered in the wrong name. Whoever is listed as the registrant of yourbusiness.co.uk is the legal holder of that domain. If your web designer registered it under their own company, the domain is theirs — regardless of who paid the £10 renewal.
For .uk domains you can check this yourself using the Nominet WHOIS lookup. Search your domain and look at the registrant field. It should show your business name, not your designer’s. For .com and other domains, use the ICANN lookup — though many registrars now hide registrant details, so you may need to ask your designer directly.
2. The hosting account
Hosting is where your website files and database physically live. It’s perfectly normal — and often sensible — for your designer or a managed WordPress provider to host your site on their infrastructure. What matters is what happens if you leave. A good provider will hand over a full export of your site within days. A bad one will point to a contract clause you never read.
3. The WordPress admin login
You should have your own administrator account on your WordPress site, in your name, with your own email address. Not an editor account, not a shared login your designer also uses — a full administrator role. If your designer has ever said “you don’t need admin, it’ll only confuse things”, that’s a red flag.
4. The design, code and content
This is where copyright comes in. Your contract should include a clause assigning ownership of the custom design, any bespoke code, and all content to you on final payment. Photos, logos and copy you supplied were always yours. Anything the designer created needs to be assigned in writing.
One WordPress-specific wrinkle: WordPress itself, and most themes and plugins, are released under the GPL licence. That means you can’t be locked out of the underlying software — but a designer can still hold the copyright on a custom design layer built on top of it.
5. Connected accounts
Google Business Profile, Google Analytics, Search Console, your email hosting, your payment gateway. If any of these were set up under your designer’s Google account rather than yours, you’ll lose access — and years of data — the day the relationship ends. It happens to Kent businesses more often than you’d think, and the data can’t be recovered.
The ten-minute ownership check
Run through this list today. Each item takes a minute or two.
- Domain: Look up your domain on Nominet WHOIS (or your registrar). Is your business the registrant? Do you have the registrar login?
- Renewal emails: Where do domain and hosting renewal notices go? If the answer is “I’ve never seen one”, they’re going to your designer.
- WordPress: Can you log in at yourdomain.co.uk/wp-admin with an administrator account in your own name?
- Contract: Find the original agreement or quote. Does it mention ownership, copyright, or what happens when you leave?
- Google accounts: Open Google Business Profile, Analytics and Search Console. Is your Google account the owner, or just a user?
- Backups: Do you have a copy of your site anywhere you control? Even a single full export on a hard drive counts.
If you answered “no” or “I don’t know” to more than two of these, you don’t own your website in any meaningful sense. That’s fixable — but fix it before you need to.
How to get control back
Most designers aren’t villains. The vast majority of ownership problems come from convenience, not malice — it was simply quicker for them to register the domain and set everything up. Approach it as a housekeeping exercise, not an accusation.
Ask for a domain transfer. For .uk domains, the registrant name can be changed through Nominet or your registrar, and the domain can be moved to your own registrar account with a simple IPS tag change. The designer needs to authorise it, but it’s a routine process, and there’s usually a small fee if any.
Ask for an administrator account. This takes thirty seconds and no reasonable designer will refuse. If they do, that tells you something.
Ask for a full backup. A complete WordPress export — files and database — is the minimum. Any competent provider can produce this in an afternoon.
Get ownership in writing. A single email confirming “the design, code and content of the site are owned by [your business]” is better than nothing. For anything bespoke or high-value, a short written assignment of copyright is worth the solicitor’s fee.
Move Google accounts to your ownership. Google Business Profile, Analytics and Search Console all let the current owner add a new owner. Have your designer add your Google account as an owner, then remove theirs if the relationship ends.
What ownership looks like with a managed WordPress website
Managed WordPress — where a provider hosts, maintains and supports your site for a monthly fee — is increasingly the default for local businesses, and it raises an obvious question: if someone else is running the site, do you still own it?
You should, and a good provider will make that explicit. Here’s what we consider the minimum standard for any managed WordPress provider in Kent — and what you should ask for before signing:
- The domain is registered to your business. The provider can manage renewals, but the registrant is you.
- You have a full administrator login from day one.
- The contract states that the design and content are yours, and that on leaving you receive a full export of the site.
- Google Business Profile, Analytics and Search Console are owned by your account, with the provider added as a manager.
- Exit terms are clear and short — no lengthy notice period, no fee to leave with your own site.
If a managed provider can’t confirm all five in writing, the monthly fee isn’t buying you a website — it’s renting you one. That distinction matters most at exactly the moment you’d rather not be finding out.
The Hidden Cost of an Unmanaged WordPress Website
Sort it now, not when you need it
The moment you discover you don’t own your website is usually a bad one — the designer has vanished, the domain has lapsed, or you’re trying to move suppliers and hitting a wall. Every one of those situations is far easier to handle if the domain, admin access and Google accounts are already in your name.
Spend ten minutes on the checklist above this week. If everything checks out, you’re in a better position than most businesses in Kent. If it doesn’t, start with the domain — it’s the asset you can’t replace — and work down the list.
And if you’d like a second pair of eyes, we’re happy to run through the checklist with businesses in Canterbury, Whitstable, Herne Bay and across Kent. We’ll tell you what you control, what you don’t, and how to fix it — whether or not you ever work with us.