While everything works, hardly anyone thinks about it. But one day you may want to change your web person, cancel a subscription or simply move the site - and find out it is not quite yours. Here is what a website is made of, and which parts of it should belong to you.
What a website is made of
Each of these parts can be yours - or someone else’s.
- The domain - the site address, for example yourbusiness.com. It is registered to a specific person or company.
- Hosting - the place where the site lives and loads from.
- The admin panel - the login you use to change texts, prices and photos.
- The site itself - design, code, texts, photos and customer enquiries.
A website builder with a subscription
On services like Wix you are really renting space: the site works only inside the service and only for as long as you pay. Stop paying and the site goes offline. Taking it out in one piece and moving it to other hosting is usually not possible - you can keep the texts and photos, but not the site itself.
The domain can stay yours if you bought it separately - but the site will have to be built again.
A site in your own account
The other way is a site that sits in your own hosting account: Netlify, Vercel or a regular hosting company. The account is registered to your email, and no contractor can switch it off. For a small site this kind of hosting is often free.
If you stop working with whoever built the site, the site stays where it is and keeps running.
The domain - always in your name
The most common trap: the designer or studio registered the domain in their own name. While things are good, nobody notices. When they are not, the address your customers know does not belong to you.
Check with your domain registrar that you are listed as the owner and that you log in with your own email.
What to ask before you buy
Ask for the answers in writing. A decent contractor will give them without any fuss.
- Whose name will the domain be registered in?
- Whose account will the hosting be in - and can I log in myself?
- Will I get full access to the admin panel?
- What happens to the site if I stop paying you?
- Can the site be moved to another contractor?
- Is there a monthly fee, and what exactly is it for?
How it works at SHio
After purchase, a SHio Basic site moves to your own free Netlify account: the hosting is yours, the admin panel is yours, and there is no monthly payment to us. You buy the domain in your own name, and during the 14 days of support we help you connect it at no charge. You pay once; the current price is on the product page, in your currency.