What do I actually own when I “own” a website?
The short answer
Usually four separate things: the domain name, which you rent each year from a registrar; the hosting or website-builder plan that keeps the site online; the content, meaning your words, images and code; and the accounts that control them. Whoever controls those accounts controls the website, so make sure they’re in your name.
Most people think of their website as one thing. In practice it’s several services, often from different companies, each with its own login and bill:
| Part | What it is | Usually billed |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | Your web address, such as yourbusiness.com, registered through a registrar | Yearly |
| DNS | The settings that point your domain at your website and your email | Often free with the registrar or host |
| Hosting or website builder | Where the website lives: Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, WordPress hosting and so on | Monthly or yearly |
| Mailboxes on your domain, such as you@yourbusiness.com | Monthly, per person | |
| Content | Your text, images, code and customer data | Yours, if your contracts say so |
Ownership is really about control
A domain is registered to you for as long as you keep renewing it; it isn’t bought outright. In practice, whoever can sign in to the registrar, hosting and email accounts controls your website. If a web designer set things up in their own accounts, ask them to move everything into yours.
- The domain’s registrant, its official holder, is you or your business.
- You can sign in to every account yourself.
- The cards on file are yours or your business’s.
- You have your own copy of your content.
Words used here
- Domain
- Your website’s name, like mycoolstartup.com. You rent it year by year from a domain registrar.
- Domain registrar
- The company you buy (rent) your website name from — e.g. Namecheap, Cloudflare, Porkbun or GoDaddy.
- DNS (the traffic controller)
- The internet’s address book: it tells a browser which computer to visit when someone types your domain.
- Website hosting
- The company that stores your website and shows it to visitors — like Vercel, Netlify, Squarespace or Shopify.
- Service
- Anything your website relies on that another company runs for you — your domain, hosting, database, email sender and so on.
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