It usually starts with something small. A change to your opening hours that nobody makes, an email that goes unanswered, then a renewal notice from a company you have never heard of. The person who built your website has gone quiet, and you are not sure what you still control.
Nothing here needs doing in a panic. A site that is still online is not about to vanish, and the steps below are worth doing in order.
First, find the domain
The domain is the part that matters most, because your website address and your email both depend on it. If you keep the domain, everything else can be rebuilt.
For a .uk or .co.uk address, use Nominet’s domain lookup. It shows which registrar the domain is with and how to contact them. It does not, by default, show the registrant’s name, so the lookup tells you who to ask rather than who owns it.
For a .com, ICANN Lookup shows the registrar and the expiry date. Personal details may be hidden there too.
Write down the expiry date. If it is close, that is the one deadline in this whole process that is real.
Then, find out whose name it is in
This is the question everything turns on. The registrant, the person or company named in the registry, is the domain’s legal owner, whoever has been paying for it.
For a .uk name, Nominet automatically creates an Online Services account for the registrant, reached with the email address used to register the domain. Try the addresses you use, including old ones. If one works and you see your domain, you are the registrant, and you are in a strong position.
If you are the registrant but cannot reach the registrar, Nominet’s advice is to start with the registrar and contact Nominet if they cannot help. If the registrar has stopped trading, you can choose a new one and move the domain through Online Services, for a fee of £10 plus VAT.
If you are the registrant but the email on the registration is the designer’s, or one you no longer have, Nominet can re-establish your identity and update the address, for £10 plus VAT. It uses an identity check that asks for photo ID and proof of address.
For a .com where you are the registrant, ICANN’s guidance for domain holders says your registrar must give you the code to move the domain within five calendar days of asking, and must give a reason if it refuses. If you think a refusal is wrong, ICANN takes complaints about it.
If the designer is the registrant, none of those routes moves the domain to you, because in the registry’s eyes it is theirs. What happens next depends on what you agreed. Some suppliers hold domains in their own name for a defined period as part of the service; if that was the arrangement, the terms say when and how it moves to you. If nothing was agreed, you need the designer to start the transfer, and if they will not, the next conversation is with a solicitor rather than a registrar.
Find out who hosts the site
The domain and the website are often with different companies. Nominet confirms you do not have to host with the company that registered your domain.
The domain’s settings point to a server somewhere. If the domain is in your control, the registrar’s dashboard shows where it points. If it is not, the records are public, and anyone technical can tell you which hosting company answers for your address in a few minutes.
If the hosting is in your name or on your card, contact the host directly. If it is on the designer’s account, the host will not normally give you access to it, for the same reason a bank would not. In that case the realistic plan is to keep a copy of the site and rebuild it somewhere you control, then point the domain at the new one.
Take back the accounts around the site
Two Google accounts matter as much as the website itself, and both can be recovered without the designer.
Google Business Profile is your listing on Google Maps and in local search results. If someone else manages it, you can request ownership from the add-business page. The current owner is emailed and has three days to respond. If they do not, you may be able to claim the profile yourself, though Google says that option is not always available.
Google Search Console shows how your site appears in Google Search. It does not need the previous person’s permission: several people can verify ownership of the same site, each with their own method. If you control the domain, you can verify it by adding a DNS record.
While you are there, list the other logins the site depends on: analytics, booking software, the contact form’s email service, social accounts the designer set up. Each one is a separate recovery, and most are quick once you know they exist.
Save what is there now
If the site is still live, keep a copy before anything changes. Save every page as a PDF from your browser, and download your photos, if you did not keep the originals.
If the site is already down, the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive often holds old copies of public pages. Type your address and look through the captures. The coverage is patchy, and forms and booking pages will not work, but the text and many images are usually there, which is most of what a rebuild needs.
What you actually own
In the UK, the person who creates a piece of work is normally its first copyright owner. The government’s guidance on copyright ownership is clear that when you commission work, you are not the first owner of it unless you agree otherwise in writing.
In practice that splits the site in two. The words you wrote, the photos you took and your logo, if you had it designed under a contract that gave it to you, are yours. The design and code the designer produced may be theirs, unless your contract says it was assigned to you. This rarely matters if you are rebuilding anyway, because a new site needs new design work, but it is worth knowing before you copy someone’s code wholesale. This is a description of how the rules generally work, not legal advice.
Preventing it next time
Most of the trouble above comes from things nobody wrote down.
- Keep a credentials list. Registrar, hosting, Google Business Profile, Search Console, analytics, email, and any booking or payment service. For each one, who holds the login and whose name the account is in.
- Know whose name your domain is in. A domain you already own should stay registered to you; a supplier can point it at their servers without owning it. If a supplier registers one for you, get the terms in writing: whose name, for how long, and what it costs to leave.
- Put your own email on the registration, so renewal notices reach you.
- Ask what happens if the supplier stops trading. A good answer is specific. A vague one is information too.
- Have a written contract that says who owns the design and content at the end, and what you receive if you leave.
None of this assumes the next supplier will vanish. It assumes people move on, businesses close and email addresses change, which they do.
If you are in the middle of this now and want a second pair of eyes, our free audit of your current site includes working out where the domain is registered and who hosts it. There is more on the domain itself in .co.uk or .com, and who owns your domain, and on what to ask before signing anything in how to read a website quote and what you are actually buying.
If you want someone to look at your own website, the free review tells you the three things we would change first.
