AI search and working with a developer
What is Website ownership?
You own your website only if the domain is registered to you, hosting is in your name, code is in a repository you control, and payment and analytics accounts are yours. If any of those sit with a supplier, you are renting at their discretion.
Also called: who owns the website · vendor lock-in
The ten assets to verify
- Domain — check WHOIS; the registrant should be your business
- 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 — in your business name with your bank details?
- Email — on your domain, under your control?
- Analytics and Search Console — are you the owner or a guest?
- Content licences — do you have rights to the photography used?
- Documentation — could someone else run it?
Why suppliers hold them
Sometimes deliberate lock-in; more often it was faster during a busy launch week and nobody revisited it. The test is not intent — it is whether you could move supplier next month without asking permission.
The most urgent one
The domain. Everything else depends on it, a transfer takes days rather than minutes, and it is the single most common way a business loses control of its website.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. Who actually owns your website — a checklist you can verify today covers this properly — 3 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.