Who Should Own Your Domain Name? You Do. Here's How I Host Your Site Anyway

Let me open with something you’ll rarely hear from a web agency: please spend your money somewhere that isn’t me. Specifically, ten to twenty dollars a year, at Namecheap or GoDaddy, on your own domain name. It’s the one bill I will actively insist you get instead of me. (My accountant has questions. I stand by it.)

Here’s why that tiny purchase matters more than most of the big ones.

The short version: You should own your domain name — not your web designer, not your agency, not me. You buy it in your own account, I build and host the website, then I send you a few DNS records to paste into your domain provider so your name points at your site. You keep the deed. I’m just the builder.

Who should own your domain name? You, the business owner — always. The domain should be registered in your own account, under your own email, paid with your own card. Your agency hosts the website and gives you DNS records to connect the two. With me, it works like this:

1. You buy the domain from any registrar — Namecheap, GoDaddy, wherever. If you’ve never done it, I’ll walk you through it.
2. I build and host the website.
3. I send you the DNS values to paste into your registrar. Stuck? We hop on a call and do it together.

That’s the whole system. The rest of this post is why it’s set up that way — and why you should be suspicious of any setup that isn’t.

Step one: you buy the domain. Yes, you.

Your domain is the deed to your digital property. The website is the house — I can build it, rebuild it, move it, extend it. But the deed decides who actually owns the address, and you don’t put the builder’s name on the deed. No matter how good his concrete jokes are.

When a domain is registered, the account it sits in controls it completely. Whoever holds that login can point the domain anywhere, transfer it, renew it — or quietly let it expire. That’s why the domain goes in your account from day one. Your email. Your card. Your login.

Plenty of agencies do the opposite. They register the client’s domain inside the agency’s own account, because it’s “easier.” And it is easier — right up until the relationship ends, the agency shuts down, or an invoice dispute turns your own business name into a bargaining chip. The industry even has a phrase for it: domain hostage. It’s exactly as fun as it sounds, and untangling it can take months you don’t have.

If you’ve never bought a domain before, it’s a ten-minute job — about as hard as ordering shoes online, except the shoes are your business’s address on the internet. And if it still feels foreign, tell me. I’ll walk you through the checkout step by step. What I won’t do is click “buy” for you on my own account. That’s not service. That’s a leash with good branding.

Step two: I host the site and send you the DNS values

Once your domain exists and the site is built, they need to be introduced. That’s DNS — the internet’s address book. Sounds technical. In practice, it’s copy and paste.

Here’s the actual handoff:

• I host the website and get it live on my infrastructure
• I send you a short list of DNS records — a few names and values
• You log in to wherever you bought the domain, open the DNS settings, and paste them in
• Within an hour or so, your domain points at your new site

That’s it. Whether you bought from Namecheap, GoDaddy, or a registrar I’ve never heard of, the screen looks roughly the same: a table where you add a record, paste a value, hit save.

And if that paragraph still made your eyes glaze over — genuinely fine. Give me a call and we’ll do it together on a screen share, you driving, me navigating. Ten minutes, done, and you’ll never wonder what a DNS record is again. (You’ll also never need to. It’s a set-and-forget job.)

Notice what this arrangement means: I never need your registrar password, and you never need to touch my hosting. Each of us holds our own keys. Which brings me to the part I actually care about.

The real reason: if I disappear tomorrow, your business doesn’t

Here’s the uncomfortable truth most agencies won’t put in writing, so I will.

I plan to be doing this for a long time. But no business is guaranteed forever — agencies close, people retire, life happens. If your domain lived in my account and something happened to me or this business, you’d be locked out of your own name while lawyers and registrars sorted it out. That’s not a risk you should carry so I can save one login.

So the whole setup is built around one rule: nothing about your website should depend on me still existing. You own the domain. You get the site’s files and full access to everything built for you. That’s the baseline, included, no asterisk.

Now, the honest bit: owning the files and knowing what to do with them are two different things. A folder of code is not much comfort at 2am if you’ve never deployed a website. So I’m putting together something for exactly that — think AppleCare for your website, except you pay once and it never expires. For a one-time $149, you get the complete code and I teach you the whole rescue drill: how to get your code, run it on your own laptop, and put it live on Vercel yourself. I’m writing the full step-by-step guide so it’s all written down, not locked in my head.

And if you’d rather never touch a terminal — also fine. Everything is packaged and ready, so worst case you hand the folder to any basic web developer and say “host this.” It’s a small, boring job for them, and it shouldn’t cost much. Either way: you’d need a new web guy. You wouldn’t need a lawyer.

That’s the opposite of how a chunk of this industry works, where the client is quietly dependent on the agency for everything — domain, hosting, edits, mercy. Dependency is a business model. It’s just not mine. I’d rather you stay because the work is good than because leaving is complicated.

One honest caveat: if what you actually want is to hand everything to one company and never think about any of it — domain included — there are all-in-one platforms and agencies built for exactly that, and for some people it’s the right trade. I’m not the guy for it. I’d rather spend ten minutes teaching you where your deed is kept than keep it in my drawer.

The deal, in one sentence

You hold the deed, I build the house, and the day you outgrow me — or I ride off into the sunset — you walk away with everything and owe nobody a thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go explain to my accountant why I keep telling people not to pay me.

If you’re starting a project and want it set up this way, get in touch. First job: I’ll help you buy a domain. From someone else.

Straight answers

Who should own my domain name — me or my web designer? You. Always you. The domain should be registered in an account you control, under your email, paid with your card. A good designer will help you buy it and then ask you for DNS access — not buy it for you under their own name.

What happens if my web designer already owns my domain? They control it — they can transfer it, repoint it, or let it expire, and if the relationship sours it can become leverage. Ask them to transfer the domain into your own registrar account; a reputable designer will do it without fuss. If they resist, that resistance is your answer.

What are DNS records, and is adding them hard? DNS records tell the internet where your domain should point — they’re the address book entries connecting your name to your website. Adding them is copy-paste in your registrar’s dashboard, and takes about ten minutes. If you get stuck, any decent agency (this one included) will do it with you on a call.

How do I check who owns my domain right now? Run a WHOIS lookup — free at lookup.icann.org. If your business name and details aren’t on the registration, find out whose are, today rather than the day you need to move.

What happens to my website if your agency shuts down? Nothing dramatic — and that’s by design. You own the domain and you have the site’s complete code. If you took the one-time $149 website insurance, you’ve already been taught the rescue drill — get the code, run it on your laptop, host it on Vercel — and it’s all written down in a guide you keep. And if you’d rather not touch it, any basic web developer can host a ready-made site for you cheaply. You’d be inconvenienced, not held hostage.

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Image credits: Photos by Markus Winkler, RDNE Stock project, cottonbro studio, and Vlad Bagacian on Pexels.