Do You Own Your Website? Code, Domain, Hosting and Email, in Plain Language

Most business owners never ask about ownership during a website project, because the relationship starts friendly and the site works. The question surfaces later: when a relationship sours, an agency closes, you want a second quote for a redesign, or you switch email providers and find the domain isn't in your name. By then, the party holding the keys has little reason to hurry. Asking at the start costs nothing and takes one conversation.

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Website code is protected by copyright. The Copyright Act defines a computer program as "a set of instructions or statements" used in a computer to bring about a specific result, and counts computer programs as literary works. Three provisions matter here:

• Section 13(1): "the author of a work shall be the first owner of the copyright therein". For a commissioned website, the author is the person or studio who wrote it, not the client who paid.
• Section 13(3): where the author is employed "under a contract of service" and makes the work in the course of that employment, the employer is the first owner, unless they agree otherwise. An outside agency or freelancer is usually not your employee, so this exception usually doesn't make you the owner.
• Section 13(4): copyright can be assigned or licensed, but "no assignment or grant is valid unless it is in writing signed by the owner of the right" or their authorised agent.

So ownership of the code comes from the contract. Look for a clause that assigns copyright in the work to you, and when that happens (on final payment is common). Without one, you may only have a licence to use the site, and its limits matter if you want to change or move it.

Two more points. Under section 14.1, the author's moral rights can't be assigned but can be waived, and an assignment of copyright doesn't waive them by itself; a contract often includes a waiver so you can edit the site freely. And no studio owns the open-source frameworks and libraries a site is built on (Next.js among them). Those come under their own licences, which generally let you keep using them.

This is general information about the Act, not legal advice. For a contract dispute or a high-stakes agreement, ask a lawyer.

For a .ca domain, the person or organisation named as the registrant holds the registration. CIRA, which runs the .ca registry, says in its Canadian Presence Requirements that only eligible individuals and entities with a Canadian connection (such as a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident or a corporation formed under Canadian law) may apply, through a CIRA certified registrar, to register "and to hold and maintain the registration of" a .ca domain name.

In practice: if a designer registers your .ca in their own name, they are the registrant, not you. Log into the registrar account yourself and check that the registrant is your business (or you, for a sole proprietor).

The closed platform. Some agencies build inside their own content management system or page builder. Nothing is wrong with that on its own, but the site can then only be edited or hosted through that agency. Ask: "If I leave, what file can I hand to another developer?" A vague answer is the answer.

The domain in their name. Many owners never check their registrar account until they need to. Confirm the registrant is your business, not the agency.

The missing assignment. The contract talks about "your website" but never assigns copyright in writing. Under section 13(4), an assignment that isn't written and signed isn't valid.

The bundled hosting-and-email account. If your email runs through the same account as your website hosting, leaving the web provider can disrupt your email at the same time. Keeping them separate is one of the simplest protections available.

The long contract. A lock-in period doesn't change who owns the files, but it limits how freely you can act on that ownership. Month-to-month means ownership is something you can actually use.

When a project wraps, a straightforward studio hands over (or you already hold) all four pieces without friction: repository access, the domain registration, a hosting account in your name and email independent of the site, plus the signed paperwork for the code. None of that should need a negotiation or a fee once the project is paid for. See website design and build for how a build can be scoped this way from the start, and Squarespace vs Wix vs Webflow vs a custom build or WordPress or Next.js for how the platform choice affects how portable your site is.

Your code stays in your repository. You own it. The site runs in your own hosting project (we build on Vercel), and the domain stays registered to you. Care plans are month-to-month, and you can cancel any time; if you leave, you take the repository and the hosting project with you. None of this is generous; it's what "you own your website" should mean by default. Ask any studio, including us, to show you the clause that says so before a project starts.

1. Log into your domain registrar directly, not through the agency's dashboard, and confirm the registrant is your business.
2. Ask whoever hosts your site whether the hosting account is billed to you, and whether you have your own login now.
3. Check whether your business email runs through the same account as your hosting.
4. Find your website contract and look for a written clause that assigns the copyright to you.
5. Ask, plainly, whether someone could hand your exact site files to a different developer tomorrow.

None of these needs technical knowledge, and a studio that treats them as reasonable questions is telling you something useful before you've spent a dollar.