Checklist · 7 minutes
Who Owns Your Site?
7 yes/no/unsure questions on the parts of your website that disappear when your designer does. Find out before, not after. Each "no" or "unsure" gets a step-by-step fix you can run today.
Back to The VaultMost business owners discover they do not own their site the day a form breaks and the designer is not answering. The information you need is sitting in your email, your billing, and your domain registrar right now. The checklist below tells you exactly where to look.
No one ever asks these 7 questions until something goes wrong. Run them on a quiet afternoon while everything still works.
Question 01 · Domain registrar
Can you log into your domain registrar right now?
Domain registrars are GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Google Domains, or wherever your business name was registered. The login should be in your name and your email, not your designer's.
Fix this today
Search your inbox for "domain renewal" or "registrar". Whoever sends you the renewal email is your registrar. If your designer's email is on it, request a transfer to a registrar you control. If you genuinely cannot find it, use whois.com to look up your domain and see who owns it.Question 02 · DNS control
Could you point your domain at a different server today, on your own?
DNS is what tells the internet "this domain points at that hosting company." If you cannot edit DNS, you cannot move your site without your designer's help. That is the lock-in.
Fix this today
Log into the registrar from question 1. Look for a section called DNS, Nameservers, or DNS Records. If you can see and edit those records, you have control. If they are locked or "managed by a third party", contact the registrar to transfer DNS management to you.Question 03 · Hosting account
Is your hosting account in your name and billed to your card?
Hosting is where your site files live. Wix, Squarespace, Cloudflare Pages, AWS, your designer's reseller account. If it is in your designer's account, you do not control whether the site stays up.
Fix this today
Find the credit card you have been billed for "hosting" or "website" on. If you cannot find any charges in your name, your designer is paying and adding it to their invoice. Request a transfer of hosting to your own account. If they refuse or stall, that is a 5-alarm fire and you should start a migration immediately.Question 04 · Content portability
Do you have a copy of your site's content somewhere other than the live site?
All your page copy, blog posts, service descriptions, photos, the actual words and pictures. In a Google Doc, a Notion page, a backup, anywhere off the platform.
Fix this today
Open your site in a browser. Copy every page's text into a single Google Doc, one page per heading. Right-click and download every photo on your site. Tag the doc with the date and put it in your business folder. Total time: 30 minutes for a 5-page site. You now have the content even if every other system fails.Question 05 · Design files
Do you have the source files for the visual design?
The Figma file, the Photoshop file, the logo as an SVG, the brand colors with hex codes. Not just the rendered version on the site, the source files that another designer could open and edit.
Fix this today
Email your designer: "Could you share the source design files (Figma/PSD), the logo as an SVG and PNG, and a one-page brand sheet with the colors and fonts? I want to make sure we have those on file." A reasonable designer ships these in a day. If they push back, the next designer you hire will have to recreate everything from scratch and that is on you.Question 06 · Deployment access
Can you push a small change to your site without your designer?
A typo fix, a phone number update, a new staff bio. The path could be a CMS login, a Wix editor, a GitHub repo, a content folder. The point: you can change the live site if you need to.
Fix this today
Ask your designer for a "content editor" login or a walkthrough of how to update a single sentence. Try it on a low-stakes page (like a blog post draft) so you do not break anything live. If your platform is on a "developer-only" stack with no editing path, ask for a 1-page how-to doc you can run yourself.Question 07 · Email infrastructure
Does your business email keep working if your designer disappears?
If you use [email protected], that email runs through DNS and a mail provider (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho, Fastmail). If your designer set it up on their account, your business email could stop on the day they walk away.
Fix this today
Find the billing for your email provider. It should be a Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or Zoho subscription billed to you. If your designer set it up under their account, request a transfer of the workspace to your billing. Email transfer is free, takes 2 minutes, and protects every business email you receive forever.What happens when one of these breaks
Each "no" is a real failure mode, not a hypothetical.
01 · Domain held hostage
If your domain is registered in your designer's name, they own your business address on the internet. They can let it expire, transfer it elsewhere, or charge you to release it. Real cases. Routine.
02 · DNS lock
If you cannot edit DNS, you cannot move your site, your email, or anything else that uses your domain. Every minute waiting for someone to update a record is a minute your business is offline.
03 · Hosting in their account
If your designer's credit card is paying for hosting and they walk away, the next failed renewal takes your site down. You will get the takedown notice through them, after it has already gone offline.
04 · Content vanishes
If your only copy of your content is on the live site and the platform deletes your account, your years of writing are gone. Nobody backs up content they think they own.
05 · Design lost
Without source files, the next designer rebuilds everything from scratch. That is a full re-bid, not a hand-off. You pay twice for work you already paid for.
06 · Editing locked
If only your designer can change the site, every typo costs $75 and three days of waiting. Your content stops getting updated. The site dates itself in real time.
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Your scorecard, the action list, and the structural breakdown · in your inbox to forward to your designer or run through yourself.
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What people who skipped this checklist say later
My designer registered my domain in his Namecheap account. He stopped responding in February. I had to file a UDRP claim to get my own domain name back. Took 4 months.
r/smallbusiness · 2026-03
Found out my "designer" was paying $20/mo to a Wix reseller and charging me $200/mo for hosting. The hosting part was on his account. I cannot move the site because I do not have an export.
r/web_design · 2026-04
When I tried to switch to a new designer, the old one would not hand over the Figma files. The new designer rebuilt from screenshots. I paid for the same site twice.
r/freelance · 2026-04