It is one of the most common stories in small-business web work. A freelancer or agency builds the site, registers the domain on their own account “to make it easier”, runs the ads from their own ad account, and everything works — until the relationship ends. Then the business finds out it does not own its own address, cannot log in to its own site, and has lost years of advertising history.
None of this needs to happen. Before you pay anyone to build or market anything, make sure the following are in your name. It takes an afternoon to set up properly, and it is much harder to fix afterwards.
The checklist
Your domain
- Registered in your business’s name, with your email address as the owner contact.
- You hold the registrar login. Your developer can be given access; they should not be the account holder.
- Auto-renew is on, with a payment card that will still be valid next year. A domain that lapses can be bought by someone else.
Your hosting and code
- The hosting account is yours, billed to you, with the developer added as a team member.
- The code lives in a repository (on GitHub, for example) that your business owns, not in a developer’s personal account.
- You receive documentation: what the site runs on, how it is deployed, and what another developer would need to take it over.
Your site’s admin
- You have your own administrator login to the site or store — not a shared login, and not a lesser “editor” account while someone else holds the keys.
Your analytics and search data
- Google Analytics and Google Search Console are set up under your Google account, with the agency added as a user. These hold your site’s history; if they belong to someone else, so does your history.
- Your Google Business Profile lists you as the primary owner. Agencies should be managers, never owners.
Your ad accounts
- Google Ads and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) ad accounts are created under your own business accounts and billed to your card.
- The agency is given partner or user access. When you part ways, you remove it — and you keep every campaign, audience and result you paid for.
Your payments
- Your payment gateway (Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU or similar) is in your business’s name, and payouts go directly to your bank account. Never accept an arrangement where customer payments pass through someone else’s account.
Your email and social accounts
- Business email (Google Workspace, Zoho or similar) is on an account you control.
- Social media accounts have you as the owner or admin, with your team or agency added as collaborators.
Your files
- You receive the logo and brand files in editable formats, plus the design files for the site.
- Every password is handed over, ideally in a shared password manager you control, and changed after anyone leaves.
What can fairly stay with the agency
Not everything an agency uses has to become yours. Most studios bring general-purpose tools with them — a component library, a deployment setup, a checkout module they reuse across clients. It is reasonable for those to remain theirs, as long as you get a permanent licence to use them in your product, so nobody can switch your site off later. What matters is that this is written down, not assumed.
Put it in the contract
A short clause covers most of it: the client owns the domain, accounts, content, designs and the code written for them; any reusable pieces are licensed to the client permanently; and all credentials are handed over at the end of the project, or whenever the client asks.
A good agency will not push back on any of this. If one does, that tells you something useful before you have paid them anything.
If you are already locked out
If a domain or account is in someone else’s name, start by asking for it to be transferred — most people will do it when asked plainly. If they will not or cannot be reached:
- Domains: contact the registrar with proof that the business is yours. The process varies, so keep invoices and correspondence that show the domain was bought for you.
- Google Business Profile: you can request ownership of a listing for your business through Google.
- Meta and Google ad accounts: you usually cannot take over someone else’s account, but you can create your own and start again. Your history stays behind, which is exactly why this checklist exists.
How we handle it
We set everything up in the client’s name from the first day — domain, hosting, code, analytics and ad accounts — and add ourselves as users. If you are about to hire anyone, us or someone else, use the list above before you sign.