Articles ·
Who owns your website when it’s finished?
What you should walk away with when a website is paid for, what nobody can hand you, and the questions to ask before you sign.
Most people ask what a website will cost and how long it will take. Fewer ask who will own it at the end, and it is the question that matters most the day you want to change something, move host or work with someone else. It is worth asking before you sign, not after.
What owning it should mean
When a website is finished and paid for, owning it should mean you hold everything needed to run it, change it and move it without asking anyone’s permission:
- The source code. The files the site is actually made of, not just access to an editor.
- The designs. The layouts and artwork made for your site.
- The repository. The place the code lives, with its history of every change.
- The credentials. Every login the site depends on: hosting, domain, email sending, anything else it connects to.
If any one of those stays with the person who built it, you can use the site but you cannot fully control it.
What nobody can hand you
No website is built entirely from scratch. Every one sits on components somebody else made: frameworks, libraries, fonts, hosted services, plugins. Those cannot be transferred to you, because they are not the builder’s to give. They reach you under their own licences, and the right answer is to be told which ones they are and that they permit the use your site makes of them.
So the honest promise is not “you own every line”. It is “you own everything made for you, and you are licensed to use the rest”.
When it becomes yours
Ownership usually transfers on payment, and it is worth knowing exactly when. Ours transfers on final payment: until then, you can use what has been delivered to review and test it; once the last invoice is paid, the work is yours outright. There is no ongoing licence fee, and we do not keep the work as leverage.
Hosting is a separate question
Who hosts the site and who owns it are two different things. A site can be yours and still run on someone else’s servers. What matters is whether you can leave. If you want to host the site yourself, or move it elsewhere, you should be able to take the code and the credentials and go.
Questions to ask before you sign
Whoever you work with, these are worth asking, and worth getting answered in writing:
- Who owns the code and the designs, and from when?
- Will I be given the repository and every login, or just access to an editor?
- Is the domain registered in my name?
- Is there an ongoing licence fee to keep using the site?
- If I want to move host, what do I get and what does it cost?
- Which parts are third-party, and what are their licences?
If the answers are vague, that tells you something.
Where we stand
On final payment the source code, the designs, the repository and the credentials are yours. Third-party components stay with their owners under their own licences, and we tell you what they are. Hosting is not a lock-in: if you would rather host the site yourself or move it, the code and credentials are yours and we will help you move it. All of it is written into our terms, not offered as a favour.