Agency rescue · The ownership check
Who owns my website?
Check in ten minutes, from your desk.
You paid for the build and you pay every month. But if the domain sits in the agency’s registrar account, the site lives on their hosting and you’ve never held an admin login, you’re not an owner. You’re a tenant with a marketing bill.
Fix my marketing leaks30 minutes with Ervin · Ranked fix list · No contract
- Domain, hosting and logins in your name
- Six questions, about ten minutes
- Metro Detroit, office in Birmingham
The business model nobody explains
Agencies don’t hide your keys by accident. It’s the retention strategy.
None of it feels like a trap while the relationship is good. All of it becomes the trap the day you want to leave, which is why owners who feel burned by an agency so often find the burn started at the build.
- 01
The domain in their account
Registered “for convenience” under the agency’s login years ago. Your name online, in someone else’s account.
- 02
Hosting inside the retainer
The server, your files and your database sit on their bill. Cancel the retainer and the site goes with it.
- 03
A builder only they can edit
A proprietary platform no other developer can touch, so leaving means starting from zero.
- 04
A contract that says nothing
No work-product clause, so nothing on paper says what’s yours when you leave.
The 10-minute check
Six questions. Answer them from your desk, today.
No calls, and no asking the agency. Write down a yes or a no for each one.
Whose name is on the domain?
Look it up at lookup.icann.org. If the registrant is the agency, that’s the most dangerous answer on this page. Your domain is your business online.
Can you log into the registrar?
Owning the domain on paper isn’t enough. You need the GoDaddy, Namecheap or Cloudflare login where it lives, or you can’t move it, renew it or point it anywhere.
Do you have a real admin login?
Not “we can make edits for you.” A username you hold, with administrator rights. On WordPress, can you see the Plugins menu? If not, you’re an author on your own site.
Who pays for hosting?
Find the hosting invoice. If it’s a line inside the agency retainer, the server and your files are theirs. You want hosting billed to your card, with the agency added as a collaborator.
Could another developer take over?
WordPress, Shopify or Webflow: yes. A platform only the agency can edit: no, and that’s worth knowing before you put another dollar into it.
What does the contract say?
Search it for “work product,” “intellectual property” and “upon termination.” A good contract says everything transfers on final payment. Silence favors whoever holds the logins.
Scoring it
What your answers mean.
- 01
Six yeses: you own it
Store the logins somewhere safe, put the domain’s auto-renew on your own card, and carry on.
- 02
Missing access, relationship fine
Ask for each missing item now, framed as housekeeping: “consolidating accounts for our records.” A healthy agency sends them without a fight, and asking costs you nothing.
- 03
Missing access, planning to leave
Don’t give notice yet. Secure access first; the firing guide has the sequence. Your leverage disappears the day you announce.
- 04
The domain is in their name
Handle this before anything else, calmly. Ask for the transfer while things are normal. If they refuse, that’s when a business attorney’s letter comes in.
- 05
A proprietary platform
You can’t own the build, so own the decision. Take your domain, content and data, and plan the next site on a platform that’s yours.
Proof, before the pitch
Real evidence should survive an incognito window.
Result one
A Troy med spa we relaunched, already winning its market.
Rêve came to AlbaTech for a full relaunch. We rebuilt the site, the local-search foundation and the review engine together, and the treatments people actually search for now surface the business.
- Search: med spa troy
- Market: Troy, Michigan
- Result: first web result
- First web result under the map, and it holds that spot every time we check
- In the map pack too, highest rated of the three at 5.0 from 111 reviews
- Also in the pack for botox troy and laser hair removal troy
Result two
Our own studio, first for “microblading Michigan”.
Fine Strokes is our own studio. We built the website and the local search setup around the service customers actually search for. We ran the method on our own business before we sold it to anyone.
- Search: microblading Michigan
- Market: Birmingham, Michigan
- Result: first position shown
30 minutes with Ervin · Ranked fix list · No contract
Sound familiar?
You’ve emailed your agency to change your own hours.
- The holiday hours
“I have to ask them to update our hours. On our own website.”
- The renewal email
“Why did the domain renewal go to their inbox instead of mine?”
- Asking for a login
“They said they’d set one up for me. That was months ago.”
- Later
“If I leave, do I lose the website too?”
Maybe. Ten minutes tells you.
Ownership is the difference between hiring help and needing permission. It’s usually fixable, but only once you know which situation you’re in, and the six questions above tell you.
A website you can’t take with you isn’t a website. It’s a lease with your logo on it.
The standard
What ownership should look like, from any agency, including us.
Hold every agency you talk to, us included, to these lines, in writing.
- Domain and hosting
Registered and billed to you
The domain in your registrar account, renewing on your card. Hosting billed to you, with the agency as a collaborator you can remove.
- Site and accounts
Your email as the owner
An administrator login on a mainstream platform another developer could take over tomorrow, and every account made for you (ads, analytics, Business Profile, Meta) listing your email as owner.
- The contract
Work product transfers
On final payment, in those words. That’s how we build at AlbaTech, and it’s the honest answer to “what stops you from doing what the last agency did?”
Why ownership compounds
Rankings, reviews and data stick to the domain.
Every month of SEO, every review and every dollar of ad learning attaches to a domain and a set of accounts. Own them and that value compounds for you. Let the agency hold them and the same work becomes their leverage. Our own studio’s relaunch shows how much history rides on the domain.
- Fine Strokes relaunched with 110 redirects from its old URLs
- 43% of its impressions in the first read still came in on old URLs
- The redirects carried them to the new pages instead of losing them
- 4.8 stars from 137 reviews, attached to its own Business Profile
Worried a new agency means starting over? When the domain and the accounts are yours, the history moves with you. That’s how we build: everything in your name from day one.
Fix my marketing leaksSearch history, reviews and ad data belong to whoever holds the domain and the accounts. Find out who holds them before you need to know.
Common questions
About website ownership.
The agency built my site. Doesn’t that mean they own it?+
Building it doesn’t make it theirs, any more than a builder owns your house. What matters is the contract’s work-product language and who controls the accounts. Custom code without a transfer clause can get murky, but your domain, your content and your data are usually yours to take.
My agency registered my domain for convenience. Is that bad?+
It’s common, and it’s fine right up until it isn’t. Ask for a transfer to your own registrar account now, while the relationship is good. It takes them a few minutes, and an agency that resists a request that simple is telling you something.
What’s wrong with monthly website plans?+
Nothing, as long as you know you’re renting. Some businesses sensibly prefer a low monthly cost over owning the site. The problem is when the plan gets sold as “your website” and canceling makes it disappear. Know which deal you’re signing.
Do I own the photos and copy the agency made for my site?+
Usually, if your contract has a work-product clause, with one common exception: stock photos licensed under the agency’s account don’t transfer. Get the source files for anything shot or written for you, and ask which images are stock so you can license them yourself.
How does AlbaTech handle ownership?+
Domain in your registrar account, hosting on your card, WordPress admin in your hands, accounts under your email, and work product transferring on final payment, in the contract, in those words. It’s the standard above, applied to ourselves.
Is this right for a business that’s just getting started?+
Not yet. If you’re just getting started and capital is tight, or you want something cheap and quick, we’re not the right call, and there are people who serve those needs well. What we build is for owners who already treat marketing as a budgeted line item and want it spent where it compounds.
What we turn down
We won’t keep your keys.
- No domain registered in our name
- No hosting you can’t move
- No builder only we can edit
- No contract that’s quiet about who owns the work
The ownership promise
No hostage accounts. No mystery handoff.
Your ad accounts, website, analytics, data and documentation stay in your name. If we stop working together, nothing gets held over you.
The rescue library
Ownership is step one. Here’s the rest.
One next step
Find out what you actually own, before you need to.
Thirty minutes with Ervin. Bring what the check turned up. We look at your website, your local search and your tracking, and you leave with a ranked fix list whether or not you hire AlbaTech.
Fix my marketing leaks