Notes for owners · Websites and conversion
Who owns your website? A plain checklist for domain, hosting and code
A website has five parts, and a developer's account often holds one or more of them. A checklist to find out who owns each, and the order for moving them into your name.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
On this page
A website has five parts that can have five different owners: the domain name, the hosting, the code and design files, the content, and the accounts for email, analytics and Google listings. Look each one up and write the account holder's name in a table. Ask for transfer of any that is not yours. Do it while your relationship with the developer is still friendly. After a falling-out it takes much longer.
Why this matters more than the design
A good-looking site on someone else's domain is rented. If the account holder disappears, changes email, forgets to renew or demands a fee, your name can go dark or into a stranger's hands. The cost is not the price of a renewal; it is every customer who types your name and finds nothing.
It usually happens by kindness, not malice. A freelancer sets everything up in their own name to save you the trouble. It works for years. Then the freelancer moves on.
The ownership register
Make a small table with one row per item and fill it in by looking, not by remembering.
| Item | Where to look | Whose name should it be in | Your finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain name | A public domain lookup, then the registrar's login | The business, with an email you read | |
| Hosting | The hosting account's billing page | The business, with a second person added | |
| Site files and database | The control panel, or the code repository | A copy held by the business | |
| Design files and logo | A folder you can open | The business | |
| Photos and text | The folder they came from | The business, or licences you can show | |
| Business email | The email provider's admin screen | The business | |
| Analytics and search console | Each tool's user list | The business as owner | |
| Google Business Profile | The profile's users list | The business, with two owners | |
| Social handles | Each platform's settings | The business |
Look at the last two rows carefully. A profile owned by an ex-employee's personal account is the same problem as a domain in a developer's name.
Order of work: what to do on the first afternoon
- Look up the domain. Note the registrant, the registrar and the expiry date. If the name is yours and the email is current, put the expiry on your calendar, with a reminder well before it.
- If it is not yours, write to the account holder. Keep it short and friendly: "We would like the domain to be in the company's name. Please tell us how to move it, and we will pay any transfer charge." Keep the reply.
- Ask for logins or a full copy of the site files and database. Even if you plan no change, you need a copy that is yours.
- Add a second person from your business to every account that allows it, so that one lost phone does not lock you out.
- Record all of it in the register, and keep the register where two people can find it.
What the move looks like
Moving a domain is often possible, but a registrar may lock a name for a time after a change of details or a recent purchase. The rules differ between registrars, so read theirs before you promise a date to anyone. You will need an authorisation code from the current holder, and an email you can open at the receiving end.
Do things in this order. Copy the site and database to a place you control. Set up hosting under your own account. Check the site works there on a temporary address. Only then change the domain's settings to point at it. Leave the old hosting running until the new one has served real pages for some days. Moving the name first and the site second is a common way for sites to go dark.
If you also use a business email at the domain, move that carefully, since mail can stop while the settings change. If you want help with the hosting side of the move, see website hosting and security.
A silk sari shop in Kanchipuram
An invented example. A sari shop in Kanchipuram has a site made by a freelancer who has since taken a job elsewhere. The owner's child assumes everything is in order until the domain's renewal notice lands in an email address nobody in the family has ever opened. The shop's name is due to lapse a few weeks before the wedding season.
The owner's child fills in the register instead of waiting. The domain lookup shows the freelancer as registrant. Hosting is paid from the freelancer's card. The Google Business Profile has the freelancer's Gmail as its only owner.
The child writes to the freelancer, kindly, asking for the transfer authorisation and an owner role on the profile. The profile role comes through; the domain does not, because the registrar locks the name for a period after the freelancer changes the contact email, and the renewal has to be paid on the freelancer's account first, at the shop's cost. The child also adds a sibling as a second user on every account and copies the site files into a folder in the shop's own storage. The name survives the season, and the full transfer drags on.
When the other party will not cooperate
Collect what you have: invoices, emails that show you commissioned the site, and any proof that your business uses the name. Contact the registrar about its own process for disputes. Then take legal advice before paying anyone to release what you believe is yours, because the position depends on your agreement and on rules that change.
Meanwhile protect what you can: ask a developer to copy the live site, and request access to your Google Business Profile through Google's own process. A rebuild from copies is slow and sad, but a business that has its copies is better placed to recover from a lost domain.
Write it down once
When a new site is built, put it in the agreement that the domain, hosting and files are in your name and that you receive copies on completion. For an existing site, start today with the domain lookup, which takes five minutes, and fill in the rest of the register this week. The name on your site is what every ad, listing and card in your marketing sends people to, so it is worth knowing who holds it. If you want someone to check the register with you, tell us what you need.
