Who really owns your website?

This was one of my very first clients, a small local business specialising in loft conversions.

When he came to me, he already had a website. The problem was that he'd discovered that having a website and actually having control of your website aren't necessarily the same thing.

He'd signed up with a design agency to build and manage the site. On the face of it, that probably seemed like a perfectly sensible arrangement. He was a builder, not a web designer. He wanted someone else to deal with the website so that he could get on with running his business.

Unfortunately, the arrangement he'd signed up to was very much in the agency's favour:

  • the website was locked down so that he couldn't make changes himself
  • if he did want something altered, he had to ask the agency to do it at a substantial cost
  • the agency's terms and conditions gave them ongoing control over the intellectual property in the website
  • but most worryingly, the domain name, one of the most important digital assets his business had, hadn't been registered in his name at all - it had been registered in the agency's.

In other words, he'd paid for a website for his business, but the supplier retained control of virtually everything that would allow him to take that website elsewhere.

And none of this was obvious to him when he'd signed the contract.

The real problem

There was nothing particularly unusual about the fact that he needed someone else to build and maintain his website. Lots of small businesses do. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with paying a supplier to make changes.

The problem was that he hadn't understood how much control he was giving the supplier when he signed the agreement.

That's an easy situation for a small organisation to get into. Website contracts can contain clauses about intellectual property, licensing, domains, hosting and termination, while the person buying the website simply wants to know what it will look like and how much it will cost.

By the time you discover why those clauses matter, you may already be trying to leave.

Getting control back

My first preference was to sort things out with the agency, but, unfortunately, they weren't interested in negotiating so we had to find another way.

The domain was the first priority. A domain name isn't just the address of a website. It's an important business asset and can also be fundamental to email and other services. Losing control of it can cause far bigger problems than losing a website.

We were able to use Nominet's process to reclaim the domain and get it back under the client's control. It's not a free service, nor is it quick, but if you already have emails using that domain and an established website it's well worth pursuing.

The website itself was different. Because of the intellectual property terms he'd agreed to, we couldn't simply take the existing site and move it somewhere else. So my advice was to start again with a brand new, and better, website.

Fortunately, the agency hadn't designed his logo, so that genuinely belonged to him.

At the end of the process he had a website he could control, a domain registered correctly, and the freedom to choose who he wanted to work with in future.

And it isn't just websites

Another client had designed his own logo with a pencil on the back of a cigarette packet. It was actually a good logo, but it needed tidying up and turning into something he could use professionally.

He paid a graphic designer to do that work, without checking the terms first. He subsequently discovered that the designer claimed ownership of the finished logo and wanted to charge him every time he used it, including on his website and printed materials.

I had doubts about the position the designer was taking and suggested that my client get proper legal advice. He decided instead to discuss the matter directly with the designer. Being a fairly large and forthright builder, he apparently made his views quite clear. The designer reconsidered, and the problem was resolved.

The important point is that paying someone to create something for your business doesn't necessarily mean that you own it. Ownership and usage rights need to be established before the work starts, not after you've built your brand around it.

It isn't the dispute-resolution method I'd recommend, but it worked on that occasion.

The lesson

Both of these examples happened a long time ago, but I still see variations of the same problem today.

When you're buying an IT or digital service, whether it's a website, a logo or support for your hardware, it's very easy to concentrate on the obvious questions: What will it cost? What will it look like? What will it do?

Some of the most important questions are much less exciting, but they're the ones you should be asking FIRST:

  • Who owns the domain?
  • Who owns the website and its content?
  • Can you move it elsewhere?
  • What happens if you want to leave?
  • What will you have to pay the supplier for after launch?

You shouldn't need to understand all the technical and contractual detail yourself. But somebody needs to look at it from your side of the table before you commit.

The cheapest time to discover that a supplier's terms aren't in your interests is before you sign them.