Do you actually own your website?
Most small business owners assume that because they paid for a website, they own it. Often they don't. They're renting it, and they only find out when they try to leave, when the monthly fee jumps, or when the person who built it stops replying to emails. Here's what you actually own on each platform, in plain English.
The four things at stake
"Owning your website" isn't one thing. It's four separate things, and you can own some and not others:
- Your domain name — the address itself. The single most important one.
- Your content — text, photos, logo. You almost always own this.
- The design and code — the actual site. This is where it varies wildly.
- Your hosting and data — where it lives and whether you can move it.
Platform by platform
| Platform | Do you own the site? | If you stop paying |
|---|---|---|
| Wix / Squarespace | No. You own your content, not the site. The design can't be exported and rehosted. | It goes offline. You cannot take it with you. You rebuild from scratch elsewhere. |
| Shopify | No, same model. You own your product and customer data and can export it. | Store goes offline. Your data exports, your storefront doesn't. |
| WordPress.com (hosted) | Partly. Restricted by plan. | Reverts or goes offline depending on tier. |
| WordPress.org (self-hosted) | Yes. You hold the files and database. | You move it to any host. It keeps working. |
| Custom-coded site | Yes, fully. You have the actual files. | Nothing happens if hosting is free or paid annually. Move it anywhere. |
The domain is the one that really matters
You can rebuild a website. You cannot easily rebuild a domain that someone else controls, especially if your email runs on it and it's printed on your van, your signage and every invoice you've ever sent.
It is genuinely common for a web designer or agency to register the domain under their account, with their details as the registrant, "to make things easier." Then a relationship sours, or they close down, and the business discovers it can't move its own website or email without chasing someone who won't reply.
- The domain should be registered in your business name, as the registrant
- You should hold the login to the registrar
- Your developer can have access, but shouldn't be the owner
- Check it right now. NZ domains can be looked up through the .nz register, and you can see the registrant on most domain lookup tools
So which should you choose?
There's no universally right answer, only the right answer for how you actually work.
| If you... | Go with |
|---|---|
| Want a simple brochure or service site that's fast and cheap to run | A custom-coded static site. Minimal maintenance, near-zero hosting, very fast. |
| Publish articles constantly and want to edit everything yourself | Self-hosted WordPress. More power, but you must keep it updated and secure. |
| Sell a lot of physical products and want it handled for you | Shopify. You're renting, but the trade-off is usually worth it for real e-commerce. |
| Are testing an idea this weekend with no budget | Squarespace or Wix. Genuinely fine for that. Just know you'll rebuild if it takes off. |
The monthly fee trap
The bigger long-term cost usually isn't the build, it's the subscription. A $49/month platform plus a $99/month "care plan" is $1,776 a year, every year, for a five page site that barely changes. Over three years that's more than five thousand dollars for something that could have been built once and hosted for close to nothing.
Ongoing fees are completely fair when real work is happening: updates, security, content changes, support. They're not fair when they're just rent for a site sitting still. Ask what the fee actually covers each month, and ask for it in writing.
The questions to ask before you sign
- Will the domain be registered in my name, with me holding the login?
- If we part ways, do I get the website files, and can I host them elsewhere?
- What exactly does the monthly fee cover, and what happens if I cancel it?
- What does a round of text changes cost after launch?
- Who owns the copyright to the design and content?
Any honest developer will answer all five in a couple of sentences. Hesitation on question one or two tells you everything you need to know.
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