Who Owns Your Website When an Agency Builds It

en 2026-09-15 7 min read

You own the code, the repository and the database. That holds at every step of our price list, from a EUR 600-900 single-page landing to a custom platform from EUR 7.500, and it is not an upgrade you pay extra for.

Ownership sounds like one thing. It is six, and an agency can hand you some of them while keeping the rest. The difference between a site you own and a site you rent shows up on the day you want to leave.

The six things you can own

The domain name

Register the domain yourself, in an account you control, and pay for it yourself. It is the cheapest asset on the list and the most expensive one to lose, because everything else points at it: your email, your history in Google, the links other people have already published. If an agency registered it for you as a convenience, ask for the transfer while everyone is still friendly. A developer can point DNS at the site without holding the registration.

The code and the repository

The code is the site. The repository is the code plus every change ever made to it, which is what the next developer reads when they need to work out why something behaves the way it does. A zip file of the finished code is not the same thing, as whoever inherits it discovers.

On our projects the code and the repository are yours. With any supplier, ask whose account holds the repository during the build, because that decides whether the work you have already paid for is in your hands if you part ways early.

The database

From step 03 upward a site can have a database behind it: CMS entries, form submissions, and at step 04 user accounts and payment records. That data is yours, you are the controller of it under GDPR, and you should be able to export it without asking permission. Ask whose account it sits in, and treat supplier access as a grant rather than a possession. A site whose customer list you cannot download is not really yours.

The content

Copy and images made for you should transfer to you, and that belongs in the agreement as one plain sentence rather than an appendix. The caveat is licensed material. A stock photograph, an icon set or a typeface is not ours to give away, and some licences are tied to the account that bought them. Ask for those in your name where the licence allows it, and a list of the rest, so you know what you are renting. Check web fonts in particular, since the licence can be per site.

The hosting account

We can host, and on some projects that is the sensible arrangement, but it is agreed per customer rather than written in as a rule. What matters more than who pays the hosting bill is whether you could move. Because the code, the repository and the database are yours, moving is a deployment job, not a rebuild. Ask any agency the same question before you sign: if this ran somewhere else next year, what would we lose? An answer that involves rebuilding the site tells you what you need to know.

The third-party accounts

Analytics, the email sending service, the payment provider, a hosted CMS: each is an account with a login, trivially opened in your name at the start and awkward to prise loose later. Payment providers are the sharpest case, because the account is tied to a bank account and a legal entity and cannot simply be reassigned. Anything touching payments sits at step 04, EUR 3.500-7.500. Whoever builds it, the provider account should be in your company name.

What it costs at each step

Ownership is not a line on our quotes. It is the same at every step, so the price reflects what gets built.

What moves a quote inside a step: how much already exists, whether it needs accounts and payments, how many languages it runs in, and what you want to happen after launch. A fixed quote always follows scoping. The full ladder is on packages.

How ownership works during the build

1. Scoping call, then a fixed quote against the step that fits.
2. Build, with the site visible to you on a preview link while it is in progress.
3. Launch onto the hosting arrangement agreed for your project.
4. Care afterwards if you want it, and nothing at all if you do not.

When to insist less

If you are still testing whether anyone wants what you sell, a step 01 landing page at EUR 600-900 answers that question and ownership of it barely matters, because there is almost nothing to own. A website builder with a monthly fee is a fair choice at that stage too, as long as you know what you are accepting: the pages may not be portable, and the rebuild when you outgrow it is real work. The moment to insist is when the site starts holding something you would hate to lose, like a customer list or content you paid to have written.

Questions buyers ask

Do I pay extra to own the code?

No. The code, the repository and the database are yours at every step, including a EUR 600-900 landing page, and it is written into the agreement rather than implied by it. Hosting is agreed per project.

What happens to my site if we stop working together?

The code, the repository and the database are yours, so whoever you hire next can pick them up and read the history of how it was built. Where the site runs from then on depends on the hosting agreed for your project.

Can I move a site an agency built to a different host?

That depends on how it was built, not on what the contract says. A site made on a proprietary platform or a locked page builder can be contractually yours and still be practically immovable. Ask to see the repository before you sign rather than after. If there is no repository, you are buying access rather than a site.

Who owns the design files?

The finished design lives in the code, and the code is yours. Working files matter less than people expect, because a site like this is built in code rather than exported from a design tool, so the code is the source of truth. More on that on design and engineering.

Does owning the code mean I can maintain it myself?

Yes, if you or the person you hire can work with the stack. We build with Next.js, which is common enough that hiring for it is not exotic, as our Next.js page explains. Owning the code makes that decision yours instead of ours.

If you want a fixed quote with the ownership terms written into it, tell us what you are building at contact.