Owning the Files at the End

What most people receive

A live website and a login to edit pages.

That is enough to run the site and not enough for anybody else to take it over, which is a problem you discover only when the relationship ends.

Missing are the source files, the hosting and domain access, the design assets, any licences, and a clear statement of what you are entitled to use.

None of that is withheld maliciously in most cases. It simply was never listed as a deliverable, so it was never produced.

This is a general description rather than legal advice, and the position on ownership varies by jurisdiction and by what a contract says.

Ownership is not automatic

The assumption that catches people out.

Paying for creative work does not necessarily mean you own the copyright in it, and in many jurisdictions the default position for a commissioned work by an independent contractor sits with the creator unless the agreement says otherwise.

What you may have instead is a licence to use it, which is frequently sufficient for running the site and insufficient for reusing the design elsewhere or having somebody else modify it.

The remedy is a clause rather than an argument: the agreement should say what transfers on final payment and what does not.

Most suppliers will agree to this readily when asked at the start. Very few will agree to it afterwards for nothing.

What a full handover contains

• Domain access, registered in your name.
• Hosting credentials, or the account transferred.
• Site administrator login with full rights.
• Source and design files, in an editable format.
• Content export, text and full-resolution images.
• Licences for fonts, images, plugins and themes.
• Written confirmation of what you own or may use.

The sixth is the one nobody thinks about and the one that causes trouble later, because licences are frequently in the supplier's name and may not transfer.

Licences are the hidden dependency

Worth separating because it produces the most surprising problems.

A theme, a page builder, a form plugin, a stock photograph, or a font may be licensed to the supplier rather than to you.

The site works, because the licence is active on their account, and it stops receiving updates or displaying correctly when the relationship ends or the subscription lapses.

Fonts are the most common: a licence covering one site under one agency's account, with your business having no direct entitlement.

Ask for a list of every paid component, whose name it is licensed in, what it costs annually, and whether it transfers.

That list is also useful for its own sake, because it tells you what the site actually costs to run.

Ask before the final payment

The timing point that makes all of this achievable.

Before final payment, handover is a condition of completing the project.

After final payment, it is a request for unpaid work from somebody who has moved on to other clients.

Most suppliers are entirely willing either way and will simply be slower once the invoice is settled, which is human rather than obstructive.

A minority will not respond at all, and that is the scenario the timing protects against.

Put handover on the completion list, and settle the last invoice once it has arrived.

A worked example

A business ended a five-year relationship with a supplier amicably and asked the incoming developer to take over.

They had an administrator login and nothing else.

The domain was in the previous supplier's account. The hosting was on a reseller plan they could not access. The theme and two plugins were licensed to the supplier. The original design files did not exist in an editable form, having been produced in software the supplier had since stopped using.

The previous supplier was cooperative and it still took six weeks, because each item had to be requested, located, and transferred separately.

Two licences could not transfer and were repurchased.

Everything would have been resolved in an afternoon had it been listed at handover four years earlier, and nobody in the original project had thought to ask.

Store it where you will find it

The step after receiving it, which is skipped and then costs the same again.

Put everything in one place that belongs to the business rather than to an individual: a shared drive or a password manager the company owns.

Include a plain document listing what each item is, where it lives, and who the account contact is.

The common failure is that handover happens correctly and lands in one person's email, and that person leaves two years later.

Two people should be able to reach everything, and that is an operational decision rather than a technical one.

What you probably do not need

Worth saying so the request is proportionate.

Working files from every discarded design direction, project management history, and internal notes are not usually necessary and asking for them makes the request look adversarial.

Nor do you need code for anything the supplier built as a reusable component across clients, which they will reasonably retain and licence to you.

What you need is enough for a competent third party to maintain and modify the site without contacting the original supplier.

Framing the request that way is both accurate and easier to agree, because it describes a capability rather than a claim over their business.

The counter-case

There are arrangements where full ownership is not on offer and that is legitimate.

A platform or a proprietary system built by the supplier and licensed to many clients cannot be handed over, and paying a monthly fee for it is a reasonable trade if you know that is what you have.

Some suppliers also price lower on the basis that they retain the design work for reuse, which is a fair exchange when it is stated.

The problem is never that ownership sits with the supplier. It is that the client believed otherwise and found out during a transition.

Ask at the start, accept whatever the answer is, and price the arrangement accordingly.

The handover list

1. Put handover on the completion list at the start.
2. Confirm in writing what transfers on final payment.
3. Get the domain into your own account.
4. Request source and design files in editable formats.
5. Get a list of every paid licence and whose name it is in.
6. Export content and full-resolution images.
7. Store it where two people can find it.

Step one costs a sentence in the agreement and prevents every other item becoming a negotiation.

Leased arrangements are covered in paying monthly for a site you do not own.

Frequently asked questions

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.