Who Owns Your Website And Domain?

Ownership questions get muddled because three distinct assets are involved, and they can each sit with a different party:

Look up your domain in any public WHOIS lookup and check the registrant organization and the administrative email. If it lists your previous web company and an email you cannot access, you do not currently control your domain — even though you have paid for it for years.

This is fixable, but it is far easier to fix while the relationship is friendly.

Sites built on proprietary platforms generally cannot be exported as a working site. Your content and images come with you; the build does not. That is not automatically a problem — the trade is convenience and support for portability — but you should choose it knowingly rather than discover it later.

Ask any provider, including us, and get the answers in writing:

Your domain is yours and stays registered to you. Your content and images are yours, and we will hand them over on request. We host and manage the sites we build because that is how we keep them fast, secure and current — but that is a service you choose to keep, not a hostage situation.