Who owns my website? Code, domain and hosting explained

By default, the web designer or agency that creates the code and design owns the copyright in them, so the answer to “who owns my website?” depends on your contract: unless it assigns that copyright to you in writing, you usually get only a licence to use the site. Your domain belongs to whoever is named as its registrant, and your hosting account belongs to whoever opened it.

The rule comes from the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Copyright first belongs to the author – the person who created the work (section 11). Computer code is protected as a literary work and graphic design as an artistic work, so the rule covers both halves of a website. Work your own employee creates in the course of their job belongs to your business, unless you have agreed otherwise. Work you commission from a freelancer or an agency does not pass to you when you pay the invoice: an assignment of copyright only takes effect in writing, signed by or on behalf of the owner (section 90(3)).

Without a written assignment, courts usually decide that the client has a licence – permission to use the website for the purpose it was commissioned for – and occasionally that the client should own it outright. Because the result depends on the facts of each case, it is far cheaper to settle ownership in the contract than to argue about it later.

Assignment or licence: what is the difference? An assignment transfers ownership, so you can change, reuse or sell the work and let any developer work on it. A licence only gives you permission to use it, and its terms decide whether you may modify the code, hand it to another developer or reuse it on a second site. An exclusive licence stops the designer licensing the same work to anyone else; a non-exclusive one does not.

This guide explains the general position under UK law. It is general information, not legal advice.

A website is made of 8 separate assets, and each has its own owner. Some are protected by copyright, some are accounts and some are licences you rent, so check them one by one:

• Domain name – your web address. Should be held by your business, named as the registrant. Check your registrar account and renewal invoices.
• Bespoke code and theme – the templates, features and integrations written for you. Should be held by your business through a written assignment. Check the contract and your access to the code repository.
• Design files – the Figma (or similar) files behind the layout. Should be handed over to your business. Check whether the contract lists them as deliverables.
• Content and images – text, photos, video and logos. Should belong to your business, with stock images licensed for your use. Check the licence behind each stock photo, font and video.
• Hosting account and backups – the server and copies of your site. Should be held by your business, or at least give you admin access. Check that you can log in and download a full backup.
• Third-party plugins and licences – paid themes, plugins and extensions. Should be in your business's name or transferable to it. Check whose name each licence and renewal is in.
• Accounts – Google Analytics (GA4), Search Console and Google Business Profile. Should list your business as owner or administrator. Check the user settings in each account.
• Business email – the mailboxes on your domain. Should be controlled by your business. Check who holds the admin login for your email provider.

Your website domain belongs to its registrant: the person or business named as the domain's holder in the registrar's records. That should be your business, not your agency or designer.

Register it under your business's legal name – for a limited company, the name registered at Companies House – rather than in the name of a member of staff who may one day leave. An agency can be listed as a technical contact and manage DNS for you without holding the domain.

To find out who owns your website domain and keep it safe:

1. 01Log in to the account where you pay for the domain, or find a renewal invoice: the company that bills you is the registrar.
2. 02Open the domain's contact details in that account and check who is named as the registrant.
3. 03Run a public WHOIS or RDAP lookup if you have neither a login nor an invoice: it shows which registrar manages the domain and when it expires.
4. 04Contact that registrar if the domain ends in .uk, because Nominet does not publish the registrant's details unless the registrant has given consent.
5. 05Protect your own registrar login with two-factor authentication.
6. 06Turn on auto-renew, note the renewal date and keep a payment card on the account that will still be valid.
7. 07Use contact email addresses that you control, because renewal and transfer notices are sent there.

Your website is hosted by the company whose servers it runs on – usually the one that invoices you for hosting – and hosting decides who controls the site, not who owns it.

If the hosting account is in the agency's name, you depend on them for every change, every restore and every move. What matters is admin or SFTP access for your business and a full backup – files and database – that you can export and keep yourself.

To find out who hosts your website and keep control of it:

1. 01Check who invoices you for hosting.
2. 02Open your registrar account and note the name servers your domain uses.
3. 03Look up your domain's DNS records: the A record usually points to the hosting company's servers.
4. 04Run a public IP lookup on that address to see which network owns it.
5. 05Ask whoever hosts your site for your own admin access and a full backup you can download.

Brand and eCommerce websites from Sparcley include 3 months of hosting free. If you would rather not look after hosting, updates and fixes yourself after launch, Complete Digital Care costs £249 per month and includes 4 hours of work.

On Wix or Squarespace you own your content, and the domain if it is registered in your name, but not the platform's code – so you cannot move a working Wix or Squarespace site to another host.

Website builders are rented software. Your text, images and product data are yours, and a domain registered in your name can be pointed at a new site or transferred away. The templates, editor and features, however, run only on the platform's own servers. Wix sites cannot be hosted anywhere else, and Squarespace can export only part of a site, such as basic pages and one blog, in a file that WordPress can import. Leaving a builder therefore means rebuilding the design and moving the content across.

Open-source platforms work differently. WordPress, WooCommerce and OpenCart are released under open-source licences, so the software itself is free to use, change and move. If you hold the custom theme, the database and the hosting access, a working site can go to another host or another developer. The trade-off is that someone has to keep the software and its plugins updated.

If you start on a builder and might outgrow it, register your domain in your business's name with an independent registrar from day one. It is the asset that moves with you unchanged, wherever the site is rebuilt.

If you stop paying, you usually do not get the copyright, because contracts that assign it normally do so only on final payment, and a site on the designer's hosting or maintenance plan can be taken offline.

The biggest risk is a domain registered in the agency's name. Code can be rebuilt and hosting can be replaced, but a domain held by someone else takes your address, your email and your search visibility with it.

If the agency has disappeared, start with the domain. A registrar can usually restore access for the named registrant once they prove who they are; if the domain is registered in the agency's name, you will need its cooperation or a dispute process – for .uk domains, Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service, which WIPO has administered on Nominet's behalf since 7 July 2026. Then find out whether anyone holds a recent backup; without one, text and images can usually be recovered, but custom features often have to be redeveloped. If the contract is unclear, take legal advice.

If your web designer is still in touch, leave in an orderly way:

1. 01Settle or agree any outstanding invoices in writing, so the handover is not held up.
2. 02Ask for the deliverables named in your contract: code repository, design files, licences and content.
3. 03Get a full backup of the files and database, and check that it opens.
4. 04Move the domain to a registrar account in your business's name, then change every password and access key.
5. 05Remove the old provider's user accounts from your hosting, CMS, Google and email services once the move is complete.

Your contract should cover 6 points: copyright assignment, deliverables, third-party licences, the domain, admin access and exit terms.

Also ask who will own anything the designer reuses from earlier projects, such as a starter theme or a code library: it normally stays licensed rather than assigned, which is fine as long as the licence lets you keep using and changing it.

Brand website development at Sparcley starts from £1,900 and takes about 4 weeks; our timeline guide explains what affects the schedule. This is general information, not legal advice: before you sign a contract, have a solicitor check it.

Whoever builds your site, ask for all 6 points in writing before you pay a deposit:

• A written assignment of copyright in the bespoke code, design and content to your business, taking effect on final payment.
• A list of the deliverables you receive at handover, such as the code repository, design files and exported content.
• Third-party and open-source licences: which components are licensed, in whose name and on what renewal terms.
• Your domain registered in your business's name, with your own login to the registrar account.
• Admin access for your business to the CMS, hosting, analytics and other accounts.
• Exit terms: what each side hands over, and how quickly, if the relationship ends.