You own your website. The site, the domain name and the content are yours, and they stay yours if you stop the monthly retainer. That is not true everywhere: some web designers register the domain in their own name, or build on a platform you are renting rather than something you can take with you. It is worth asking before you sign anything.
What happens if you stop paying the retainer
The website is still yours. What the retainer buys is hosting, the SSL certificate, updates, backups and small changes — the running of it, not the right to it.
If you leave, you leave with the site and the domain.
The domain name is the part people lose
A domain is registered to a person or a company, and whoever is named on that registration controls it. If a web designer registers it in their own name, then the address your customers know, your email addresses and every business card you have printed sit behind somebody else’s account.
This is the single most common way small businesses get stuck with a supplier they want to leave. It is also the easiest thing in the world to check.
Three questions worth asking any web designer
- Whose name is the domain registered in?
- If I stop paying you, what happens to the site?
- Can I take the site to another host, and what would that involve?
Straight answers to those three tell you most of what you need to know about who you are dealing with.
Related questions
Do I own the content on my website?
Yes. The words and images are yours — most of them came from you in the first place.
Can I move my website to another company?
Yes. The site and the domain are yours to take.