The moment the invoices stop
A website project ends in the same shape for most small businesses: the site goes live, the final invoice is paid, a message of congratulations arrives, and attention moves back to the day job. Whether the next few years go smoothly or badly is decided inside that same week, because the handover is not paperwork on the designer's side. It is the moment the answer to a blunt question gets fixed for good: what do you actually own?
Ask it late and you get the anxious version instead. The recovery pieces on this site keep running into the same aftermath: a domain registered to somebody else years ago, a mailbox the owner cannot reset, a backup that lived on a server that stopped being paid for. None of it went wrong on the day it was discovered. It was stored up at the handover, and the handover never really happened.
This piece is the short version of that conversation. Five things decide whether a business could actually leave. One distinction explains most of the trouble. One piece of paper is the legal proof. And a test at the end runs in ten minutes, without asking anybody's permission, which is the better order to discover these things in.
Access is not ownership
The distinction this whole subject turns on is simple to state and easy to miss: access is not ownership. Being granted admin rights to an account proves nothing about who the account belongs to. A login somebody gave you sits on top of an account somebody else created, and the person who created it can generally revoke what they granted. Venbit, an American web firm, makes the point in its ownership checklist: the recommendation is that accounts be registered to the business, billed to the business's card and tied to an email address the business controls, because anything less is borrowed however comfortable it feels. Treat that as one firm's practitioner experience rather than law, but it describes the failure mode precisely.
The worst version is not dramatic. A designer sets up the hosting, the domain registration, the email and the analytics in their own name because it is quicker, pays each one monthly from their own card, and gives the client logins wherever the client needs them. For years nobody notices, because the work is being done. The arrangement only gets tested on the day it changes: a disputed invoice, an illness, a firm closing, or a decision to switch everything off. What the business holds at that point is access, and access is precisely the thing that can be taken away.
The five that decide whether you can leave
Of everything a handover can include, five things decide whether a business could actually walk away. The rest is paperwork and convenience. These five are the leverage, and each one missing turns leaving into a negotiation.
First, the domain, registered in the business's own name. The check is a registrar login rather than a lookup, and it is worth doing even while the relationship is fine: who owns your domain name (and how to check) covers it in full, including how a designer ends up as the registrant without anybody meaning it to happen.
Second, the email account that can reset everything else. Logins everywhere recover through email, which makes the mailbox the master key: whoever administers the domain's mailboxes can reset the passwords to everything that points at it. Where the email is hosted, and whose account and card it sits under, is a question that deserves a plain answer. The ten-minute exposure check for a designer who has gone quiet starts from the same question, and it works better answered while relations are warm.
Third, the site itself, and a dated copy of its files to go with it. Handing over logins but no copy is handing over a house with no plans for it. The practical question is where the most recent copy lives: the host's own backups, a designer's archive, or somewhere the business itself can reach. The five questions to ask about backups before you need one covers what mainstream hosts actually promise about backups, and it is worth reading before assuming anything.
Fourth, the copyright in the design and the words. This is the one item settled by writing on paper rather than by logins, and it gets its own section below.
Fifth, the Google Business Profile, at primary owner level. Google's help page on profile roles spells out the difference: a profile can have several owners but only one primary owner, owners can remove other owners and managers, and managers cannot remove anybody. New owners and managers must also wait 7 days after being added before they can delete the profile, remove anybody or transfer primary ownership, and a removed person's replies to reviews, posts and comments stay on the profile. Being added to your own business's profile as a manager rather than an owner is a real and quiet failure mode, and it takes minutes to fix while somebody cooperative is on the other side of the request.
Beyond the five, the UK web firms that write about handovers list much the same parcel of extras: a DNS record export, a hosting login or full files with a database, content management access at owner level, a note of where email is hosted and who pays, analytics and Search Console transferred rather than shared, licences for fonts, photographs and plugins, and third-party accounts such as payments and bookings reset to the business's own email. Jones Digital's handover table, Paul Walsh's ten point list, Adam Roe's checklist and Venbit's all converge on roughly that shape, which is as close to a consensus as this question gets. Adam Roe's version adds two items worth keeping: a log of the decisions made along the way, and an honest list of what was deliberately left unfinished.
The one piece of paper
Copyright in the UK starts with the person who created the work. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the author of a work is its first owner, and the rule that passes copyright to an employer covers employees only. A freelance designer who builds your site is not your employee, so the first owner of the design and the code is the designer.
That ownership moves only by assignment, and the Act is specific about the form: section 90(3) provides that an assignment of copyright is not effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor. Paying the invoice transfers nothing by itself. Neither does a promise, verbal or otherwise. What works is a document, signed by or on behalf of the person handing the copyright over.
The practical ask is one sentence long: a written assignment of copyright, signed by the person who created the work, kept with the business's papers. What matters is that it exists, and that the business owns the words and pictures it paid for the day it needs them.
What managed should mean
Every checklist the search turns up assumes the arrangement is finished: a one-off build, a handover meeting, an envelope of files. The arrangement most small trades are actually in now is a monthly one, where somebody else does the work and the owner does none of the looking after. That sharpens the checklist question rather than dissolving it: what do you still own when you are doing none of the work yourself? The answer is all of it. Managed does not mean rented.
The distinction is worth testing against this studio's own arrangement, because every checklist should survive being held up to the person writing it. Here, the domain is registered in the client's name from the start and stays there, the content written for the site stays the client's, copyright in the design and code transfers to the client at launch, moving an existing domain over is free, and care and hosting starts at £49 a month including VAT with no notice period, so the exit is whatever the client says it is. The work is delegated; the five are not.
That is also the test for anybody else's managed arrangement, whatever they call it. The questions to put to anybody who looks after your site: whose name is the domain registered in, what happens to the site and its files if the arrangement ended tomorrow, and which of the five would have to be negotiated rather than simply taken. The pricing page sets out what the care plan here includes and who owns what, and the same three questions work on it as on anybody else's page.
The ten-minute walk-away test
Everything above shrinks to five checks that need no tools and about ten minutes, most of it waiting on a password reset. They can be run today, without asking anybody's permission.
The first is the registrar login. Log in, or ask for the login, and read the registrant name on the domain record. If it is the business, that is one of the five held. If it is not, that is the gap to close first, because everything else about the site routes through that record.
The second is the email question. Find out who administers the domain's mailboxes, and whose account and card the service sits under. If it is the business, the master key is in the right hands. If it is somebody else, it is fixed by a request rather than an argument, and cheaper to make while relations are warm.
The third is the copy. Ask where the most recent dated copy of the site and its files lives, and whether the business can reach it directly or only be handed it. A copy held only inside somebody else's account is an access item rather than an ownership one, and it fails the test for the reason the second section gave.
The fourth is the paper. Look for the signed assignment of copyright and the handover summary, the plain document saying what was delivered and what was deliberately left for later. The summary is the easier of the two to find. The assignment is the one that matters more, and if it does not exist it can be requested in writing at any point, not just at handover.
The fifth is the profile. Open the Google Business Profile, check your own role, and check who holds primary owner. The fix, if one is needed, takes minutes on the same page, provided there is still somebody cooperative on the other side of it.
Five answers in, the verdict is one of three. Everything held, and leaving is a phone call rather than a negotiation. Mostly held, and the gaps have names, so they can be closed with a week of emails. Nothing held, and the section below is the one to read.
If there was never a handover
If the test found the gaps rather than the possessions, the position is usually recoverable, and two pieces on this site carry the detail. What to do when the web designer stops responding covers the dated email first, the escalation after it and what a rescue can and cannot save. The domain ownership check covers how to confirm who the domain is registered to and how to move it if the answer is the wrong name.
One line on the copyright argument, kept simple: a rebuilt site put together from your own words and your own photographs sidesteps the argument entirely, because the author of a work is its first owner, and in that case the author is you.
The questions that come up
Who legally owns my website, me or the person who built it? It splits in two. The domain, the accounts and the profile belong to whoever's name and card they sit under, which is what the five above are about. The copyright in the design and the code starts with whoever created it and moves only by signed written assignment. The recovery guide answers this in more detail from the after-the-fact end.
What is a website handover checklist? The list of what should change hands when a build finishes: registrar access in your name, the email administration, the site files with a dated copy, the signed copyright assignment and primary owner on the Google Business Profile, with the fuller parcel of extras listed after the five above.
Do I own my domain if my web designer registered it for me? Whoever is named as the registrant holds it, and being billed for it does not make it yours. Who owns your domain name (and how to check) shows how to find out and how to move it if the answer is the wrong name.
Does paying for a website mean I own the copyright in it? No. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the copyright in what a freelance designer created starts with the designer and changes hands only by written, signed assignment. The check is a document, not a receipt.
Can my web designer refuse to give me my website? It depends which meaning of "mine" is being refused, which is exactly why the access and ownership distinction matters. What is registered to the business and in the business's own accounts cannot be refused. What lives inside an account somebody else created cannot be taken, only negotiated. The recovery guide is written for that conversation.
Can I move my website to a different designer? You can, and the five decide how smooth it is. The domain, the email and a dated copy of the files already in your hands make a move routine. Any of them missing turns the move into a negotiation first.
What happens to my website if my designer retires or closes the business? What you hold today decides it, which is the point of running the ten-minute test while the relationship is fine: the five, held by you, survive any retirement or closure. What happens after a designer stops responding to emails is the subject of the recovery guide.
What should I ask for when my website is finished? In one sentence: registrar access in your name, the email administration, the files with a dated copy, the signed copyright assignment and primary owner on your Google Business Profile. Everything else from the extras list above makes the envelope complete, but those five are the ones to chase first.
This is what a handover from this studio looks like in practice: the domain in your name from day one, the content yours, care and hosting from £49 a month including VAT, and no notice period. If you want that list in writing for your own business, the contact page is where the conversation starts.