What if my web developer disappears?

Recover the domain first, because everything depends on it and a transfer takes days rather than minutes. Then hosting, then take a full backup with whatever access you still have. If the code was never in a repository you control, budget for a rebuild.

How do I check who owns my domain?

Run a WHOIS lookup on your domain and read the registrant field. It should name your business. If it names your developer, an agency, or a privacy-proxy service you did not arrange, you do not control the single asset everything else depends on.

What should a website quote include?

A quote should name a fixed price against a written scope, list the deliverables, state who owns the hosting, domain and code, define what counts as a post-launch fix and for how long, and say what is explicitly excluded. Anything vaguer becomes a negotiation in week two.

Hiring

Who owns my website after it is built?

You should own all of it: the domain registered to your business, hosting in your account, code in a repository you control, and the payment provider account in your name. If any of those sit with the supplier, you are renting the site at their discretion.

Answered by Anas Bin Masud 209 words 3 sections

The ten things to verify

Domain — WHOIS should name your business as registrant
Hosting — can you log in yourself?
DNS — who controls the nameservers?
Source code — is there a repository and are you an owner?
Database — can you take a backup right now?
Payment provider — your business name, your bank details
Email — on your domain, under your control
Analytics and Search Console — owner, not guest
Image and font licences — do you have them?
Documentation — could another developer take over?

Why suppliers hold them

Sometimes deliberate lock-in, more often convenience during a busy launch that nobody revisited. Intent does not matter. The test is whether you could move supplier next month without asking permission.

What is legitimate

Managed hosting sold as a service is fine — provided the account is in your name and you can leave. IP in the delivered work should transfer to you on final payment, not be licensed to you.

The longer version

This answer is deliberately short. If you want the full treatment, Who actually owns your website — a checklist you can verify today covers it in about 3 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.

Who answered this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan — fifteen live client sites, six of them stores taking real payments. These answers come from those projects rather than from a content brief. More about how I work, or ask me something directly.