Many companies discover a website ownership problem at the worst possible moment. The previous developer stops answering, or the card linked to a renewal expires, and the website and email go offline together. Your business website domain and hosting are company assets, not technical details to leave with whoever built the site. This guide explains what the business should control and how to check it in about an hour.
Domain, hosting and email are different things
- Domain: your address, such as company.com. It is registered for a period through a registrar, and whoever controls the registrar account controls where your website and email point.
- Hosting: the server that stores your website files and database. You can change hosting without changing the domain.
- Business email: it may run on the same hosting or on a separate service, but it depends on DNS records managed in the domain account.
Keeping these separate in your head matters. If the domain sits in someone else’s account, that person can take your website and email offline even if you have a copy of every file.
The ownership checklist
- Registrar account created with a company-owned email address, not a personal address of an employee or contractor.
- Registrant details in the company’s name, with auto-renewal enabled and a valid payment method.
- Hosting account owned by the company, or at minimum full administrator access for a company account.
- Website admin panel with individual administrator accounts instead of one shared login.
- Connected services such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics and your Google Business Profile, with a company address added as owner.
- Source code and database as a downloadable copy or access to the code repository.
How to verify it in an hour
Start with a WHOIS or RDAP lookup to see the registrar and the expiry date. Registrant details are often hidden for privacy, so ask your provider for a screenshot of the account page showing the registrant name. Then:
- Log in to the domain and hosting accounts yourself. “The developer has the password” is not access.
- Record the expiry dates of the domain, SSL certificate and hosting plan in a shared company calendar.
- Turn on two-step verification for the registrar and hosting accounts; they are the keys to everything else.
- Store credentials in a company password manager rather than in chat messages.
What to request from your developer at handover
When a new site is delivered, or when you end a contract, ask for a written handover that lists the login details for every account, a full copy of the files and database, how backups run and how to restore them, and any paid plugins or subscriptions the site depends on. Our software project handover checklist is a useful template you can adapt for a website.
Do not assume that files sitting on the server are a backup. Test a restore as described in our guide to testing data recovery.
When should you move hosting?
Moving hosting is a separate decision from owning the domain. Consider it when the site is consistently slow, support does not respond, or the plan does not include regular backups. Schedule the move outside peak hours, lower the DNS TTL a day in advance, and test both the website and email on the new server before you point the domain to it.
If you are planning a new website or want a second look at your current setup, the AISMISR website design and development team delivers sites with every account registered to your company from day one, plus a clear handover list.