If your designer pays for the hosting, the host's customer is the designer, not you. Move the account into the business's name, or at least get your own login, the renewal date and a current backup.

An arrangement that made sense

The designer built the site, opened a hosting account to get it live, and added the cost to the invoice. Every year since, a hosting line has appeared on their bill to you.

It is convenient. Nobody at the business deals with the host, and the designer handles renewals and the occasional problem.

But the host's customer is the designer. The account is in their name, paid on their card, with their email address on every notice. As far as the host knows, your business does not exist.

That is fine until something changes in the designer's life rather than yours.

What belongs to someone else

The fifth surprises owners most. When the site is down on a Saturday and the designer is away, the host cannot discuss the account with you, however obviously the website is yours.

How it goes wrong

The commonest way is dull. The designer's card expires or is replaced, the renewal fails, and the warnings go to an inbox that is busy, filtered or no longer read. After a grace period the host suspends the account.

Others are life events. The designer takes a full-time job, retires, falls ill or moves away, and the small yearly task of paying your hosting slips.

Sometimes it is a disagreement over an unrelated invoice, which leaves the site as the one thing the designer still controls.

And where a designer keeps many clients in one account, a problem with that account reaches all of them at once.

None of this needs anyone to behave badly. Ordinary events happen to the designer, and your website is attached.

Three questions to ask this week

Whose name is on the hosting account? The answer should be specific: which company, which login, which email address receives the notices.

When does it renew, and on what card? A date in your own calendar costs nothing and catches a failed payment before the host does.

Where are the backups, and when was one last restored? Until someone has restored one, nobody knows whether they work.

Most designers will answer happily. Many have been meaning to hand the account over for years.

Moving the account into your name

Many hosts can change the account holder. The current holder asks, the host confirms, and the business adds its own card and an email address it reads.

Where the designer's account is a reseller account holding many clients' sites, the usual route is a new account in the business's name and a move of the site and email into it.

That move is routine for a web professional: copy the files and database, test the site on the new account, then point the domain at it, moving email carefully so no messages go missing in between.

The designer can stay on as the technical contact, with a login of their own if the host allows extra users.

A worked example

A family-owned shoe store on a suburban high street has a small website with the brands it carries, its hours and a guide to fitting children's shoes, built in 2012 by an independent designer.

She kept the hosting in her own account, paid it on her card and billed the store once a year. For five years it worked without a problem.

Last spring she took a full-time job and stopped taking new clients. Her card was replaced in July, the renewal failed, and the notices went to an inbox she now checked less often.

In the last week of August, in the middle of back-to-school shopping, the host suspended the account. The website went down, and so did the store's email, which ran on the same hosting.

The owner phoned the host and was told, politely, that only the account holder could discuss it. The designer paid within a day of seeing the messages.

In September the account moved into the store's name, with the store's card and the owner's email for notices.

The owner now keeps a copy of the backups, the designer stays on as a user, and the renewal date is in the store's own calendar.

Backups you can reach

A backup stored inside someone else's account is, in practice, someone else's backup.

Ask for a full copy of the site, files and database, and keep it somewhere the business controls. Refresh it whenever the site changes in a significant way, and every few months otherwise.

That copy is what lets a new host, or a new developer, have the site running again in days rather than starting from nothing.

Check the domain while you are there

The domain name matters even more than the hosting. Whoever is listed as its registrant decides where the website and the email point.

If the designer registered it under their own name, ask for the registrant to be changed to the business, and for renewal reminders to reach someone there who reads them.

The counter-case

Plenty of designers and web companies host clients deliberately, as a managed service: they keep the software updated, take the backups and watch for problems, and the business pays for that work rather than for bare hosting.

For a business without technical staff, that is often the better arrangement, and moving the account away would mean taking on work the designer was doing.

What makes it safe is not whose name is on the account but what is written down: who can get in, where the backups live and how the business would leave with its site and email.

Either move the account into the business's name, or get access, records and a written exit.

Before the card changes

  1. Ask whose name is on the hosting account.
  2. Find the renewal date and the card used.
  3. Check who registered the domain name.
  4. Keep a current backup outside the account.
  5. Request your own login to the control panel.
  6. Agree in writing how you would leave.
  7. Move the account into the business's name.

Step four is the one to do first if you do only one. With a recent copy of the site in hand, a failed renewal or an unreachable designer becomes a delay rather than a rebuild.

Owning the account helps only if the site itself can move, which is the problem in a site locked inside the host's own builder.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns hosting my designer pays for?

As far as the host is concerned, the designer does. The account, the contract and the support relationship are in their name, even though the website is yours.

Why act while everything still works?

Because ordinary events in the designer's life, such as a replaced card, a new job or an illness, can take your site and email offline without warning.

Can the host help if the designer is away?

Usually not. Hosts can only discuss or change an account with the account holder, however obviously the website belongs to your business.

How do I move the account into my name?

Many hosts can change the account holder at the current holder's request. Otherwise the site and email are moved into a new account opened in the business's name.

What if the designer hosts as a managed service?

That can be the better arrangement. Get in writing who holds the account, where the backups are kept, and how you would leave with your site and email.

What should I do first?

Get a full backup of the site's files and database and keep it somewhere the business controls. That one copy makes most of the other problems recoverable.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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