What you own, and what you keep
The domain, the website and the content belong to you. Here is what that means while we run it, and what goes with you if you leave.
Ownership is easy to claim and hard to check. So here it is in detail: what belongs to you from the first day, what we do while you let us run the site, and what you walk away with if you ever decide to stop.
Three things that are yours
The domain. The address people type to reach you is registered with you as its owner, from the start. Not in our name with yours listed underneath, and not something we hand over later. Whoever holds the address decides where it leads, so this is the part that matters most.
The website. The pages, the way they’re laid out, and the words and photos on them were made for your business and belong to your business. A full copy of the site is yours to have whenever you ask for it.
The content. The description of your services, the area you cover, the reviews and photos gathered from what you had already put in public, the answers to the questions your customers ask. It started with you, and it stays yours, including everything we wrote from it.
Running it is a service, not a condition
Most owners would rather not look after a website, so by default we keep yours running: keeping it online, making the changes you approve, renewing the domain each year. That arrangement is something you choose. It sits on top of ownership, not underneath it, and stopping it doesn’t change who owns anything.
If you would rather run the site yourself from the start, that is a different way of having the same property, not a lesser version of it. Some owners are comfortable taking care of that part. Most aren’t, and they don’t need to be.
If you decide to leave
Leaving takes a request, not a negotiation. You receive a full copy of the website and its content, and we hand control of the domain to you, so its yearly renewal is yours to manage from then on. None of that depends on why you’re going, how long you stayed, or anything else.
You keep the address your customers already know, the pages they already found, and every review and photo gathered there. The only thing that ends is our part in running it.
If a payment is missed
This is the question most people don’t ask out loud, so here is the plain answer.
You hear from us before every charge, and again if one doesn’t go through. If it stays unpaid, the site eventually goes quiet: visitors see a short page saying it is temporarily unavailable, not an error and not an advert for anyone else. Through all of it:
- The domain stays in your name. We never take it, move it or hold it back. If its yearly renewal comes round while things are paused, we tell you first, so you can renew it yourself.
- A full copy of your site is always available to you, whether the site is showing or not.
- Nothing is deleted. Your pages, your words and your photos are kept.
- Paying brings the site back. Settle what was missed and it returns, with nothing extra to pay and nothing to set up again.
A missed payment pauses our work. It never puts your property in question.
What leaving looks like in practice
Picture a house painter whose site we have run for three years. His nephew has started building websites, and the painter decides to keep it in the family. He tells us he’s leaving.
He gets a full copy of the site and takes over the domain’s renewal. The address on his van and his business cards doesn’t change, because it was always his. The reviews, the photos of finished kitchens and the list of towns he covers go with him. Nothing has to be rebuilt, and nobody has to ask permission.
Why it’s set up this way
Ownership only means something if it holds on the awkward days: when you’ve decided to move on, or when a payment slipped through. Registering the domain in your name from the beginning is what makes that true from the outset, rather than something we would have to agree to when the moment came.