The most expensive mistake a small business makes with a website is not the price. It is letting somebody else register the address, and finding out years later when the relationship ends.
A designer who registers a domain "for" a client and puts their own company in the registrant field owns that domain. Not maliciously, usually; it is simply what happened. But when the client wants to move, the designer is the only person who can release it.
Ask, politely and in writing, for the domain to be transferred into an account in your name. Most designers will do it; it is not usually deliberate. You are asking for an authorisation code and for the domain to be unlocked, and the transfer takes a few days.
If they refuse, your options depend on whose name is in the registrant field. If it is yours, the registrar can help you recover access. If it is theirs, you are in a dispute, and the realistic outcome for a small business is usually to register a new address and move, which is painful but survivable.
Either way, do it before you need it. The worst time to discover this is the week you decide to change designer.
The web address is registered in your name and your business, from the first day, at $35 a year and up depending on the ending. We are not the registrant. If you leave, you take it, and you do not need to ask us for anything.
That is a deliberately boring policy and it is the single most important line on this page.
Most ways of getting a website end with you renting one. Cancel a builder subscription and the pages stop existing; there is nothing to take with you because there was never a file. That is the trade you make for the monthly price, and plenty of people make it knowingly.
This is not that. What gets built for you is a WordPress theme: a real folder of files, with its own style.css, index.php and functions.php, that installs through Appearance, Themes, Add New, Upload Theme on any WordPress host in the world. We host it for you at $15 a month so you never have to think about it, and the web address is registered in your name, not ours.
If you ever want to leave, ask for a copy and it is yours: the theme file, the address, the content. You can hand it to any developer and they will recognise exactly what they are looking at, because it is an ordinary WordPress theme and not a proprietary export nobody else can open.
Free to look at the finished site. You pay when you want it live.
Addresses cost different amounts by ending: a .com is cheaper than a .io. We charge what the registrar charges us plus a small margin, and show the exact figure before you pay.
No. Privacy hides your personal details from public lookups, which is sensible. The registrant is still you, in the registrar's own records.
Yes, once it is more than sixty days old. Unlock it, get the authorisation code, and start the transfer at the new registrar. It takes about five days and does not take the site offline if the settings are copied first.
Nothing. It is registered to you and renews with the registrar. Point it wherever you like.
Yes. Say so at checkout and we will point the existing address at the new site. You keep it exactly where it is.
Free to look, and nothing to cancel if you decide against it.
Build my website