Most people never think about this until something goes wrong. A working relationship ends, or someone stops answering e-mails, and then comes the question nobody asked at the start: whose website is this, actually?
It is worth asking before you hire anyone, because “you own it” gets said a lot and covers several different things that do not all work the same way. It also belongs with the other questions worth asking of anyone you are thinking of hiring, which are set out in how to choose who builds your website.
Ownership is five things, not one
Here are the five, and the rest of this guide follows them.
Ownership is who holds legal title to the website and the code.
Access is whether you can get into the website and change it.
Account control is who holds the underlying accounts, the domain registration and the hosting, and can move or close them.
Licensing covers the software the website depends on and the terms under which you may use it.
Service management is who keeps the thing running and patched.
Holding one does not automatically give you the others, which is why the useful question is which of the five you have. A development agreement settles several of them. Your domain and your hosting come with terms of their own, so check what your agreement says about those two rather than assuming either way. The space between what the agreement covers and what it does not is where people get caught.
What the agreement settles
Ask to see the development agreement before you sign anything. What else that document should answer is covered in what a website quote should tell you. Four things should be answerable from it without you having to interpret them.
When ownership passes, and what triggers it. The agreement should identify the precise event that transfers ownership. In ours, that event is payment in full, which is not necessarily the day a website goes live.
What counts as yours. The website as delivered, and any custom work you specifically commissioned and paid for, including its source code.
What stays with the developer. The agreement should say what the developer keeps. Ally Drez retains its reusable Developer Tools, and where those are built into a website, the agreement licenses them to the client on payment in full so the website keeps working.
How third-party software is handled. Where your website uses other people’s software, the agreement should say how those licenses are arranged.
Ours is published in full, so you can read how we answer each of those. Once you have paid in full you can move the website away from our hosting, although any license we provided through your hosting plan may need replacing. Until then the reverse applies: we retain title, you have no license to use, host, copy or take it, and the website is built and staged on our own server until payment is complete.
Your own content and brand assets remain yours throughout, and our agreement returns your content in every case, including where a project ends without full payment.
Licensing, which is the one people assume
Licensing is easy to take for granted, because the software arrives already working. Our websites typically rely on WordPress and other third-party components. None of it is owned by the developer or assigned to you. Each component stays governed by its own license.
Our agreement recognizes three arrangements, and your Project Scope identifies which one applies:
- You bring a license you already own.
- You buy a new license in your own name.
- We provide the license, which may be tied to hosting with us and stay active only while you host there. After that you would obtain your own.
In the first two, the license stays with you and you handle renewals. The third changes what happens when hosting ends, so confirm which option applies before signing.
What the agreement does not reach
Account control was the third item on that list. Ours covers the website and the software it runs on, and it does not govern your domain registration or your hosting account. Whoever built your website, find out what their agreement says about those two, and check the accounts themselves either way.
Your domain. Go to lookup.icann.org and enter your domain name. The registrar should be listed, although the registrant details may be hidden for privacy, so this is a starting point rather than proof of who controls the account. Confirm who the domain is registered to, who controls the registrar account and what the transfer terms are. Logging in establishes that you currently have access, but the registration records and written terms establish the arrangement.
Your hosting. Find out whether the hosting account belongs to you or is part of a managed-hosting service. On a managed plan, you may have website access without controlling the underlying server account. The service terms should explain the arrangement and what happens if you leave, including any e-mail hosted with the account.
Five questions worth asking
The questions below cover all five, and they are worth asking of anyone, including us.
- Will the domain be registered to me or my company, and who will control the registrar account?
- Will I have direct access to my website, and who controls the underlying hosting account?
- What transfers to me and when, which software licenses come with it, and which stay behind? Where is all of that written down?
- Who keeps the website updated and patched after launch, and is that included? What that work involves, and what it costs, is set out in what it costs to keep a website running.
- If I leave, what do you hand over, and how long does that take?
The answers should be clear and in writing before the project begins. If you would like ours, e-mail sales@allydrez.com.