Websites
Who Should Own Your Website Domain and Hosting
6 min read
Imagine you hired someone to build your website two years ago. Now you want to change the phone number, swap a photo, or rebuild everything with a different team. You look for whoever made the site and nobody answers anymore. When you try to touch the web address, you find out the domain is registered in the name of someone you barely remember, and that person has no obligation to help you.
That is the situation the question who should own your website domain is meant to prevent. And the answer is short.
The short answer: the domain should always be registered in the name of the business owner, under their own ID or company number. Hosting can stay with whoever looks after the site, as long as that person or company can reach the server at any hour and answers for it when something goes down. That is how we do it at L’Atelier 54.
What is a domain, and what is hosting?
The two are often sold together, which is why almost everyone mixes them up. They do different jobs:
| Domain | Hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The address of the site, like yourbusiness.com |
The server where the site’s files are kept |
| Think of it as | The address of your shop | The building where the shop operates |
| Who should own it | You, always | Whoever looks after the site, with clear responsibility |
| If something goes wrong | The address can end up in someone else’s hands | The site goes offline |
One is the name people type to find you. The other is the technical place where the site lives. You can change the second without losing the first, and that is exactly why the domain is worth so much.
Why must the domain be in your name?
Whoever is listed as the registrant of a domain is the one in charge of it: they decide who renews it, who transfers it and where the address points. If the registrant is a freelancer or an agency, someone else is in charge of your business address.
Three situations show up again and again:
- The agency disappears or closes. Your site stays online, but nobody has the authority to touch the address.
- The domain expires and nobody pays. For Brazilian
.com.brdomains, Registro.br freezes an unpaid domain and, after a period, releases it for anyone to register. An address you promoted for years can end up in a stranger’s hands. - You want to change provider. With the domain in your name, you just point it to the new place. In someone else’s name, it becomes a negotiation.
Your professional email depends on it too: hello@yourbusiness.com only works while the domain is active.
How to find out who owns your domain today
It takes two minutes and needs no password. This path is for Brazilian .com.br domains:
- Open the Registro.br Whois lookup.
- Type the full address of your site, such as
yourbusiness.com.br. - Look at the registrant. For a company, the business name and company number appear. For an individual, the name and part of the ID number appear.
- If the name there is neither yours nor your company’s, ask whoever registered it to move it into your name. Do it while the relationship is still good.
If your address ends in .com or another extension, ask for access to the panel where it was bought and check the registrant there.
How we do it at L’Atelier 54
The domain is always in the client’s name. We come in with developer access, which is enough to set up the site, the email and where the address points, without owning anything that should be yours.
The hosting is entirely ours, and it is one of the things that sets us apart. We use a VPS server where only L’Atelier 54 clients are hosted. Your site does not share space with strangers’ sites, and the people who look after the server are the same people who look after your site. Because the access is ours and works at any hour, if the server goes down we can put the site back online right away, without waiting on a third-party support desk.
Why split it this way? The domain is the identity and the asset of the business, so it has to be yours. Hosting is a technical service that needs someone on standby, so it makes sense for it to sit with the people who build and maintain the site.
That is also why, on our quote form, one of the questions is whether you already have hosting and a domain. Someone who arrives with the domain in another person’s name leaves the first conversation knowing what needs to be sorted out.
What if you want to host somewhere else?
Hosting with us does not lock anyone in. If you prefer to host the site wherever suits you best, we hand the site over for you to take with you. Since the domain is already in your name, you just point it to the new server. You decide where your site lives, and we keep the hosting only for as long as you feel it is worth it.
What to ask before hiring someone to build your site
Take this list to any conversation, whether with an agency, a freelancer or a platform:
- Will the domain be registered in my name?
- What kind of access will you have to it? Technical access, yes. Ownership, no.
- Where will the site be hosted, and who answers for it if it goes offline?
- Who has access to the server, and at any hour or only during business hours?
- Who renews the domain, and will I get the expiry notice?
- If I want to take the site somewhere else, will you hand it over?
If any answer comes back evasive, that already tells you how the relationship will work once the site is live. This topic also shows up in the checklist from our post on custom websites versus templates.
The next step
If you have not yet checked who the registrant of your domain is, do it today. If it is you, great. If it is not, better to find out now than the day you need it.
And if you want a site where the address is yours from day one, see how our web design works or ask for a quote with two lines about what your business does.