Who actually owns your domain name?

Here is an uncomfortable question: if you fell out with your web company tomorrow, would you keep your domain name? For a surprising number of UK small businesses the honest answer is no — because the domain was never registered to them in the first place. Your domain is your business's address, your email, and years of Google trust. Five minutes today makes sure it is actually yours.

How this happens

It is rarely malicious. A designer or builder platform registers the domain "to keep things simple", puts it in their account, under their name — and moves on. Everything works fine until you want to switch supplier, the designer retires, or the renewal card fails. Then you discover the address your vans and business cards carry belongs to someone else.

The five-minute check

• For a .co.uk or .uk: search your domain on Nominet's WHOIS lookup (nominet.uk). Look at the Registrant line.
• For a .com: any WHOIS lookup service works the same way.
• Good: your name or your business name. Bad: your web company, an agency you have never heard of, or "Identity Protected" on a domain you never chose to protect.
• Bonus check: do you have the login for wherever the domain lives? If you cannot log in, you do not control it — whoever can, does.

If it is not in your name

Do not panic, and do not start a war — most designers will fix it in a day when asked plainly. Ask for two things: the registrant changed to you (your name, your address, your email) and, if you are moving, an IPS tag transfer to a registrar account you control. Get it done while the relationship is good — it is a two-minute job for them now and a legal headache for you later. If they refuse and the business is demonstrably yours, Nominet runs a dispute service for exactly this.

The rule for whoever builds your next site

Whoever you use — an agency, a builder platform, or us — insist on this line in writing: "the domain is registered in my name, and I can take it with me." Anyone who resists that sentence is telling you something. It is the difference between owning your address and renting your own name back. The same goes for hiring a freelance web designer, and here is what to do if your web designer has disappeared already. Picking a new name? Here is how to choose a domain name.

How we handle it

Every 3 Wee Pages site comes with a .co.uk registered in your name — it is on the pricing page in plain English, and leaving with your domain is covered in our FAQ. Your site, your words, your name on the deed. That is the whole point.