Insights / Strategy

Who owns your website after it is built?

Devaltech · 5 min read

A common story in Kenya: a business pays for a website, the agency registers the domain and hosting in its own name to make setup easier, and years later the business cannot move the site, change a phone number in the footer, or leave without a fight. Ownership is not a slogan on a pricing page. It is four specific things, and each one should be checkable before you sign anything.

The four things that need to be in your name

The domain, registered to you, not to whoever built the site. The hosting account, either yours from the start or handed to you in full at launch. The source code, in a repository you can access, not a zip file promised “on request”. And the accounts behind any integration, M-Pesa till, email sending, analytics, so a login does not disappear the day the relationship ends.

If you cannot log in and change something yourself, you do not own the site. You are renting it from whoever does.

How this works here

You own 100% of the source code, the domain and the hosting accounts from day one. If you already have a domain and hosting, we build on it directly. If you do not, everything gets registered and deployed in your name from the start, not transferred later as a favour. Ownership of the code transfers to you when the project is complete, in full, with no partial rights kept back.

What this means if you ever want to leave

You can host anywhere and work with anyone after, with no lock-in built into the agreement. That only works if the four things above were actually in your name the whole time. It is worth asking any provider, including this one, to prove it before you pay a deposit: log into the domain registrar yourself, log into the hosting account yourself, and look at the code repository yourself.