Insights · 5 min read
Who should own your domain, hosting and app accounts? (You should)
By Austin Hunter ·
Many small businesses and nonprofits find out who really controls their website only when something goes wrong: the developer stops answering, the agency closes, or a renewal lapses. If the accounts are in someone else's name, getting them back can take weeks. Owning them from the start costs almost nothing.
What you should own
- Your domain name, registered in your organization's name with an email address you control.
- Your DNS: whoever controls DNS controls where your website and email point.
- Your hosting account, or at least an owner-level login to it.
- Your email service (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or similar).
- Your Apple Developer and Google Play accounts, if you have an app.
- Your code repository (GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket), with the developer added as a collaborator.
- Payment, analytics and other third-party accounts your site or app depends on (Stripe, Google Analytics, Search Console, Firebase and so on).
How to check in ten minutes
- Look up your domain at your registrar, or ask your developer which registrar it's with and whose account it's in.
- Search your inbox for renewal notices for the domain and hosting. If you never get them, they go to someone else.
- Ask for a list of every account the project uses and who the owner is on each.
- Confirm you can log in to each one yourself, with two-factor authentication on your own device.
How to move accounts into your name
Most of this is routine and doesn't touch the live site. Domains can be pushed to your own account at the same registrar, or transferred to a new registrar with an authorization code. Hosting, analytics and code repositories usually let the current owner add you as an owner and then step down. App store accounts have formal transfer processes; we've written a separate guide for those.
- Do one account at a time, and write down each login in a password manager your organization controls.
- Don't change DNS settings during a transfer unless you know what each record does; email often breaks this way.
- Turn on auto-renew for the domain and keep a payment card on file that won't expire soon.
A fair setup with your developer
You own the accounts; your developer gets their own login with the access they need. That keeps changes traceable, lets you remove access when the work ends, and means no one person's inbox stands between you and your website. A good developer will welcome this.
How we work
Wherever we can, we set accounts up in the client's name and use our own logins inside them. If you've inherited a site or app and aren't sure who owns what, we can do the inventory with you on a free call.