Published · Updated · By Christopher Ross
Your website is four things held in four different places: the domain name, the hosting account, the software the pages are built on, and the accounts around it (email, photographs, analytics). Each one has its own answer to "do we own this", and the answers do not have to agree. A firm can own its domain outright and still lose every page the day it leaves a vendor.
Want this handled instead of DIY'd? See how ownership works on a fixed-price site.
| Asset | Where to check | What to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Your registrar account, then lookup.icann.org (or CIRA's WHOIS for a .ca) | Can you log in to the registrar yourself, and does the renewal invoice go to your firm? |
| Hosting | The hosting control panel | Can you log in and download a full backup yourself? |
| Platform | The vendor, in writing | What exactly do we receive if we leave, in what format? |
| Accounts | Email, photograph licence, analytics | Who controls the mail, holds the licence and owns the analytics account? |
If you rent office space and pay to have proper millwork built into the reception area, you paid for it, you chose it, and it is yours in every sense except the one that matters. The day the lease ends, it stays. Nobody hid that from you. It is simply what improving somebody else's property means.
Some law firm websites are leasehold improvements, and unlike the millwork, nobody explained it at signing.
Two product shapes sold to family law practices are rentals by design. A legal directory bundles a "free website" with the listing, and the site lasts as long as the listing does. A template vendor sells a monthly package with the site, hosting and support folded into one figure (the template guide works through what that adds up to over a few years). Both are legitimate products. Neither is a purchase, and the difference only becomes visible on the day you want to leave.
The four assets, one at a time
1. The domain name
The most important one, and the cheapest to get right. Your domain is the only asset here that cannot be rebuilt, because it is the address on every business card, every letterhead, every referral, and every email address at the firm.
How to check, right now: can you personally log in to the registrar account and see the domain, today, without asking anyone? If you do not know which company the registrar is, enter your domain at lookup.icann.org; for a .ca domain, use the WHOIS lookup on cira.ca instead. Then find the renewal invoice: is it addressed to your firm and paid on your firm's card, or does it go to your web designer? If you cannot log in, or the invoices go to your designer, that is the problem worth solving first.
Do not expect the lookup to settle who owns the domain. Under ICANN's Registration Data Policy, in force since 21 August 2025, registrars must redact the registrant's name from public results, may redact the organization, and replace the email with an anonymised address or contact form. So a blank result, or one marked "redacted for privacy", tells you nothing either way. For a .ca domain, CIRA gives free privacy protection automatically to domains registered by an individual, and a registrar may offer it to businesses too. If the fields are visible and show your web designer's company rather than your firm, that is the one to fix.
The records bear that out. On 21 September 2026 the public registration record was pulled for 60 domains, 45 family law firms and 15 divorce mediation practices in the US and Canada found through web searches (a convenience sample, so read it as an illustration). On 59 of the 60, no registrant organization or email was visible: 11 carried an explicit "redacted" marker, 48 listed no registrant contact at all, and the two groups overlap. The one visible record was a Canadian domain, and redaction practice varies by domain ending. All 60 named the registrar.
ICANN's own advice to domain holders is blunt on this point: it is "not recommended that you list website designers, hosting providers, or any other third parties as the registrant(s) of your domain name." Ownership on paper with no access is a slower version of the same problem, which is why the login comes first and the lookup second.
2. The hosting account and the files
How to check: can you log in to the hosting control panel yourself. Is the account billed to the firm's card, or is hosting a line item on a vendor invoice. Can you download a full backup, meaning the files and the database, without putting in a request.
If hosting is bundled into a monthly fee and nobody at the firm has a login, what you have is a lease on someone else's server.
3. The platform the site is built on
The one that catches people, because it looks fine right up until the moment of departure.
There are two categories. Standard software, which any competent developer anywhere can take over, and proprietary builders, where the pages exist only inside that vendor's system. Some proprietary systems offer an export. Ask what is in it first: a folder of flat files that another developer cannot run resembles your site the way a photograph of a car resembles a car.
How to check: ask the vendor one question in writing. "If we leave, what exactly do we receive, in what format, and can another developer run the site from it?" A vendor whose answer is a clear yes will say so in one line. An answer that arrives long, warm, and vague is also an answer.
4. Email, photographs, and the accounts around the site
The forgotten fourth, and losing it hurts more than losing the site.
Email. If your firm's email runs through an account the vendor controls, a dispute can interrupt client communication, which is a different order of problem from a dark website. Check who controls your domain's mail settings and whose account your mailboxes actually live in.
Photographs. Custom photography of your attorneys and your office comes with a licence, and the licence names who may use the pictures and where. Ask for the terms in writing before you assume the headshots travel with you. Stock images have a licence too, issued to whoever bought them; if the vendor bought them, ask whether that licence names your firm.
Measurement and advertising accounts. Any analytics or advertising account should be owned by the firm with the vendor added as a user, rather than the reverse. Years of history live there and it cannot be reconstructed after the fact.
Vendors' own websites will not settle it either. When the pricing pages of 16 law firm website sellers were read for the template guide on 2026-09-21, 11 could be read, and exactly 1 of the 11, a Canadian studio charging a one-time fee, said the domain and hosting account transfer to the client. One agency said outright that it keeps its platform. The other 9 said nothing about the domain at all, which is why the question goes in an email and the answer goes in a file.
Send this to your vendor
Copy the email below, change the two bracketed bits, and send it to whoever looks after your site now. It works just as well for a vendor you are thinking about hiring, me included.
Subject: Quick ownership questions about our website
Hi [name],
I am checking who holds the accounts for our website. Five questions, covering the four parts the site is made of. Short answers are fine:
- In whose name is the domain registered, and can I log in to the registrar myself?
- Is the hosting account in my firm's name, and can I download a full backup whenever I want?
- Is the site built on standard software another developer could take over, or on your own system?
- If we part ways, what do I receive, in what format, and how long does it take?
- Who holds the licence to the photographs, and who owns the analytics account?
Thanks, [your name]
Write the answers down when they come back. Nobody has to be lying for "we'll sort that out" in a friendly first meeting to become a different conversation three years later, with different people in the room.
A vendor whose answer is a clear yes will say so in one line.
If you are already locked in
Whether your agreement gives you a right to any of this is a contract question and belongs to your own counsel, not to a web designer. What follows is only the technical picture.
Chase the domain first. It is the one asset that cannot be recreated, and it takes cooperation. Under ICANN's Transfer Policy the Registered Name Holder is the only party that can approve or deny a transfer to another registrar, and the registrar hands the transfer code to that holder. If your designer is the holder of record, moving the domain into your firm's name goes through them, or through a formal dispute, which can be slow and can fail, and ICANN's advice for that situation is to get legal advice on what the contract obliges them to do. Start early.
Assume the pages are rebuildable. If the platform will not release anything usable, the practical answer is to rebuild. Your text can be copied from your own live site. Your photographs may need re-licensing or re-shooting. A rebuild is a known cost with an end date, which is more than can be said for a dispute.
Deal with email before anything else moves. Sort out where mail lives and who controls it before any domain or hosting change is attempted. An interrupted website is embarrassing. Interrupted client email is not.
Why I go on about this
Because setting a site up this way is no harder for the vendor than the other way, and it is the difference between renting a site and buying one.
On every build here the domain is registered in the firm's name, the hosting account is in the firm's name, and the site runs on standard software any competent developer could take over tomorrow. If you decide in three years that somebody else should look after it, there is nothing to negotiate back, no export fee, and no phone call where I explain that it is more complicated than you thought.
That is not generosity. It is what buying something is supposed to mean.
Solos feel this question hardest, because the monthly package is priced for a one-attorney budget: websites for solo family law attorneys.
Email hello@divorcewebdesigner.com, or use the contact page.
Common questions
The lookup shows "redacted for privacy". Does that mean something is wrong?
No. Since 21 August 2025 ICANN's Registration Data Policy requires registrars to redact the registrant's name in public results, lets the organization be redacted, and has the email replaced by an anonymised address or contact form, so redaction is what you should expect to see. What the lookup does still show is the registrar, which tells you where the login you need to have actually lives.
Our domain is a .ca. Does the same check work?
The login and invoice test is the same. The public lookup is different: use the WHOIS on cira.ca, which queries the .ca registry directly. CIRA privacy-protects domains registered under an individual category automatically, and a registrar may sell privacy protection to a business registrant, so a protected result is not a warning sign there either.
The vendor says the domain is "included" in our monthly plan. Is that ownership?
Included means they pay for it. Ownership is whose name is the Registered Name Holder at the registrar, because that is the only party ICANN's Transfer Policy lets approve a move to another registrar. Ask them to show you the registrar account with your firm's name on it, or to change it while you are still on good terms.
How long should it take a vendor to hand over the domain?
Once the holder of record agrees, ICANN's Transfer Policy gives the registrar five calendar days to provide the transfer code and lift the transfer lock. The clock only starts when the holder of record asks, which is another reason to settle whose name is on the account before you need it.
Checked against ICANN and CIRA help pages on 2026-09-21: Registration Data Policy, Transfer Policy, Do you have a domain name? Here's what you need to know, Registrant rights and responsibilities, WHOIS and .CA domain privacy, Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP). The 60-domain and 16-vendor figures are from a sample collected on 2026-09-21 for these guides; aggregates only, no site names, and not a random sample.
Canadian? The same three sizes in Canadian dollars are on the CAD pricing page.