Do you actually own your trade website? Seven questions
Almost every tradesman I speak to believes that paying for a website means owning it. It is the most reasonable assumption in the world and it is wrong often enough to be worth ten minutes of your afternoon. Paying for a website buys you the work of building it. Ownership is a separate question, decided by whose name sits on the domain registration, who holds the files, and who can log in to the hosting. Those three answers are set in the first week of a project, usually without anyone discussing them, and most trades only discover what was decided years later, at the exact moment they want to change designer, move host, or update a phone number. The good news is that all three are checkable today, from your phone, without asking anyone's permission. Here are the seven questions that tell you where you actually stand.
You own your trade website only if the domain is registered in your name, you hold a copy of the site files, and you can log in to the hosting yourself. Paying the invoice does not settle any of the three. Check the domain registrant first, because it is the one that decides everything else, and it takes about two minutes to look up.
Ownership is three separate things, not one
A website is not a single possession: it is a domain name, a set of files, and the accounts underneath them, and it is entirely normal for a tradesman to own one of the three, believe he owns all three, and control none of them when it matters.
Think of it like a van. The domain is the registration document, the files are the van itself, and the hosting is the space you keep it in. You can be driving something daily that is registered to someone else, and you will not find out until you try to sell it. Websites break the same way, quietly, and only at the point of change.
The reason this happens so often is not villainy. It is convenience. When a designer registers the domain on your behalf, sets up hosting on their own account and never sends you a login, every one of those steps saved you a job at the time. It is the tidying up afterwards that gets skipped, and nobody notices for three years.
The seven-question ownership check
Work through these seven questions honestly, and any answer that is not a clear yes is a piece of your business someone else is currently holding.
Five yeses out of seven is a good position and a quick tidy-up. Two or three is the common result and worth a fortnight of chasing. Zero happens more than you would think, and it is usually a trade who has had the same site since 2015 and has never needed to touch it.
Check the domain first: it decides everything else
The domain registrant is the legal holder of the name, and whoever is named there can move the site, point it elsewhere, or let it lapse, regardless of who paid for the design work.
Every domain is a contract between the registry and one named registrant. For a .uk name the registry is Nominet, and their guidance on registrant rights and transfers is worth a read before you need it (Nominet, domain support). ICANN publishes the equivalent for .com and the rest, including your right as a registrant to move your name to another provider (ICANN, registrant rights and responsibilities).
How to check it in two minutes
Search for a WHOIS lookup, put your domain in, and read the registrant field. For .uk names use Nominet's own lookup, which will show the registrant name unless it is hidden under an opt-out. Some registrars mask personal details for privacy, which is fine and normal, but the tell is different: if you cannot log in to the registrar account yourself, the privacy setting is not the problem, the access is.
The email address is half the battle
The second failure point is subtler and I see it constantly. The domain is genuinely in the tradesman's name, but it was registered against an old email address, sometimes one belonging to a business that no longer exists. Renewal warnings go to an inbox nobody opens. The name lapses, and by the time anyone notices, the site is dark. Whatever else you do this week, make sure the address on the domain is one you can open today.
Where ownership quietly goes wrong
Three arrangements account for nearly every trade website that turns out not to belong to its owner: the designer registered the domain, the site sits on a builder platform with no export, or the whole thing lives on hosting nobody has the login for.
The first is the most common and the easiest to fix while everyone is still on speaking terms. The second is not a fault so much as a design of the product: builder platforms keep your content portable but not your site, so you can leave with your words and your photos but not the thing itself. That is worth knowing when you choose the platform, not when you try to leave it.
The third is the one that turns into an emergency. A site with no accessible hosting account is fine right up until it is not: a renewal fails, a server moves, someone changes a password, and there is no route back in. Any of those on a Friday afternoon in your busiest month is a genuinely bad week.
What a straight answer looks like in writing
An honest website quote states in plain English that the domain is registered to you, that the finished files are yours to keep, and that you can have a copy plus the logins on request without a fee.
You do not need a solicitor to check this, and you do not need to be awkward about asking. Ask three questions before any deposit changes hands: whose name goes on the domain, do I get a copy of the site, and what happens if I stop paying you. A designer who does this properly will answer all three in a sentence each, because they have answered them before. Hesitation on the third question is the informative one.
On monthly arrangements specifically, the answer that matters is what a monthly fee is actually buying. A care plan should cover hosting, security, renewals and edits, with the site itself already yours. That is a different arrangement from a plan where stopping payment means the site goes off. If you want the full list of questions to put to a designer before signing anything, it is in how to choose a website designer, and what a normal, well-run build should actually feel like from your side is in what happens when you order a trade website.
If the answers came back wrong
Getting ownership back is almost always a paperwork job rather than a legal one, and the order matters: domain first, then a copy of the files, then hosting, because the domain is the only piece that cannot be rebuilt.
Start by asking plainly and in writing. Most designers will simply do it, and a surprising number will be relieved you asked, because holding a client's domain is a liability they did not really want either. Ask for the domain to be transferred into an account in your name, a copy of the site files, and the hosting logins. Give a reasonable deadline and keep the tone friendly, because co-operation is faster than any alternative.
If the answer is silence rather than no, that is a different problem with a different playbook, and it is common enough that it deserves its own guide. If you are already there, work through the buyer's checklist before you commission anything new, so the replacement does not repeat the arrangement you are trying to escape.
Worst case, you rebuild. It is not the disaster it sounds like: a new site on a domain you own, with your photos and your reviews, is a couple of weeks of work and it ends the problem permanently. What you must not do is rebuild into the same arrangement, with someone else's name on the registration, because the next time this happens you will be five years further into a business that depends on it.
Why this matters more than it did five years ago
Your website is now the address every other channel points at, so losing control of it takes your Google listing, your review links, your quote follow-ups and your van signwriting with it.
When a website was a brochure, losing one was annoying. Now it is the hub: the profile links to it, the ads land on it, the QR code on the van goes to it, and the customer checking you out at 9pm finds it or finds nothing. That concentration is exactly why it is worth ten minutes to confirm it is yours.
I build a free mockup of your actual business before you pay anything, and the domain goes in your name from the start. If you like it, it is a one-off £600 to build (£300 to start, £300 when you approve it), then £20 a month for hosting, security, renewals and unlimited small edits, rolling and cancellable any time. Stop the £20 and the site is still yours, because it always was. See what a tradesman website costs, or apply at sitework.uk/#apply.