Your web designer will not hand over your website. Here is what you actually own.

If your web designer will not hand over your website, start by finding out what you actually own, because it is usually less than you think. Under UK law, paying somebody to build something does not transfer the copyright in it. Check the domain first, then the hosting, then the contract. This is how, in about twenty minutes.

The situation, stated plainly

You want to move your website, or change designer, or just get a copy of it. The person who built it has stopped replying, or has replied with an invoice, or says the site is theirs.

It is one of the most common complaints in this industry. It is also, in most cases, not the crime it feels like. Understanding which of the three things you are actually dealing with decides what you can do next.

There are three separate assets, and they have three different owners:

1. Your domain name. Almost always recoverable.
2. Your hosting and the files on it. Usually recoverable.
3. The design and the code. This is the one that surprises people.

Deal with them in that order, because the first is easy and the last is hard.

Step one: find out who actually owns your domain

This takes five minutes and you can do it right now.

The legal owner of a domain is whoever is listed as the registrant. Not the person who pays for it, not the person who set it up, the registrant.

For a .co.uk or .uk domain, use the Nominet WHOIS lookup at nominet.uk/whois. Type your domain in.

For a .com or .org, use the ICANN lookup at lookup.icann.org.

What you are looking for is the registrant name. There are three possible answers:

• Your business name. Good. You own it. Whoever manages it, the domain is yours and you can request a transfer.
• Your designer's name or their company. This is the problem. They own it, legally, and asking for it is a negotiation rather than a demand.
• Redacted or a privacy service. Common for personal registrations. Nominet allows individuals to opt out of having their address published, and .com registrars often use privacy services by default. You will need to ask, or check your own records for who paid.

If you find your own name there, stop worrying. Most of the fear in this situation is about the domain, and most of the time the domain is fine. Your email address depends on it, which is what makes it feel existential.

Step two: the hosting and the files

Separate question, separate answer. Hosting is a service somebody pays for monthly. If the account is in your designer's name, you cannot log in, but the content on it is a different matter from the account itself.

Ask for two things specifically, because vague requests get vague replies:

• A full copy of the site files, as a zip
• A copy of the database, if the site has one

Most reasonable people will provide these. If they will not, and the site is publicly live, a competent developer can rebuild a static copy of what is published in an afternoon. That is not ideal, and it will not recover anything behind a login, but it means you are never truly stuck.

Step three: the part nobody tells you

This is the section worth reading twice.

Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 11(1), the author of a work is its first owner. There is an exception for employees creating work in the course of their employment, but a freelancer or an agency is not your employee.

Which leads to the sentence most business owners find hard to believe:

Paying somebody to design something does not, by itself, make you the owner of the copyright in it.

Copyright belongs to whoever created the work, from the moment it exists, unless it has been transferred in writing. Under section 90(3), an assignment of copyright is only effective if it is in writing and signed by the person giving it up.

Vague wording does not count either. A line in an email saying "you'll own the finished site" is generally not a valid assignment. Practitioners writing on this are consistent that loose phrasing like "the client shall own the final product" does not do the job.

What you usually have instead is an implied licence: the right to use the thing you paid for, for the purpose you obviously paid for it. That is normally enough to keep running your website. It is often not enough to take the code to a different agency and have them rework it.

This is not legal advice, and the specifics of your situation matter. If real money is involved, a solicitor who does IP work will be cheaper than getting it wrong.

So it is usually not malice

Here is the reframe that will save you a lot of stress, and it is the part the other articles on this subject tend to skip.

In most cases nobody set out to trap you. A designer registered a domain on their own account because it was quicker than talking you through it. Nobody wrote an assignment clause because nobody thought about it at the time. Then the relationship ended and the default legal position turned out to be different from what everyone assumed.

That matters practically, not just emotionally. An accusation gets you a defensive silence. A specific, polite request gets you a zip file.

Try this, in writing:

I am moving my website to a new provider. Please can you confirm the registrant of the domain and initiate a transfer, and send me a copy of the site files and database. Happy to cover any reasonable admin time for this. Please confirm by [date].

If that fails, and only then, escalate. For a .uk domain Nominet has a formal dispute resolution service. For genuinely obstructive cases, a solicitor's letter is usually the next step, and often the last one needed.

What to ask before you sign, next time

The entire problem is preventable, and the prevention costs one email.

Before you engage anybody, ask these five questions in writing and keep the answers:

1. Will the domain be registered in my business name, with me as the registrant?
2. Who owns the copyright in the design and the code when the project ends, and is that assignment in writing?
3. If I leave, what exactly do I receive, and what does it cost?
4. Whose name is the hosting account in?
5. Will you give me admin access to my own site?

You are entitled to five straight answers. A supplier who will not put them in writing before you pay has told you something useful for free.

The single highest-value action, if you take nothing else from this: register your own domain, in your own name, on your own card. It costs about ten pounds a year and it removes the worst version of this problem permanently.

Our own answers

It would be hollow to publish that checklist without answering it.

Your domain is registered in your name, with you as the registrant, and we will say so before you sign. Hosting is in our account while we run the site, because that is what running it means, and you can have a copy of the files whenever you ask.

On ownership we are going to be straight with you rather than comfortable, because this is exactly the clause this article is about. On a monthly plan we retain the code and you hold an exclusive licence to use it. That is what allows the build to be spread across a low monthly fee rather than invoiced up front. If that arrangement does not suit you, you have two other routes, both published: buy the code outright at a price printed on the plan card, which reduces for every month you have paid, or buy the site once at the outset from £1,295 and own it from day one.

The point is not that our answer is the generous one. The point is that it is written down before you commit, in pounds, where you can read it and decide.

When we surveyed twelve UK pay monthly website providers in July 2026 for what they publish, three mentioned a Data Processing Agreement anywhere on their public site. Exit terms were similarly scarce. Ask any provider, including us, for the number.