The business should own them. The registrant of your domain name should be your business, under its ABN, not the web designer who set it up and not the staff member who happened to pay for it. The same goes for the hosting account and the admin login that controls your website. If any of those sit in someone else’s name, you are renting your own front door.
Why this happens
Most small business websites start the same way. Someone offers to sort it all out, registers the domain name with their own details because it is quicker, puts the hosting on their own account and sets up the website login for themselves. Nobody means any harm. But years later that person has moved on or stopped answering emails, and the business discovers it cannot renew, move or even log in to the thing it has been paying for.
How to check who the registrant is
You can check this yourself in a few minutes.
- Go to the auDA website, which is the body that runs Australian domain names, and use its WHOIS lookup. WHOIS is simply the public record of who registered a domain name.
- Type in your domain name and look at the registrant and the registrant ID. For a .com.au name the registrant ID should be your ABN or ACN.
- Check the registrar listed, which is the company the name is registered through, and make sure someone in the business has the login for that account.
- Ask your web person, in writing, whose name the hosting account is in and who holds the main admin login for the website, which is the login that can add and remove every other user.
If the registrant is a person or another company, or nobody can tell you where the hosting login is, you have work to do.
What “we host it for you” often means
Plenty of web designers host the sites they build, and many do it well. The problem is when the hosting account, the domain name and the website login are all in the designer’s name and the business only ever receives an invoice. That is not ownership. You cannot move to another provider without their cooperation, you cannot restore the site if they disappear, and a dispute over a bill can take your website and email offline. Hosting is a service you buy. The domain name and the website are assets you should own.
What to do if a former web person holds it
Start politely. Most people hand things over without fuss once asked. Request a registrant transfer of the domain name into your business, ask for the hosting account to be moved or for a full copy of the site, and ask for an admin login that you then use to remove theirs. If they will not respond, auDA has a process for disputing a .com.au name where the business can show it has the right to it, and your registrar can help with the paperwork. Keep every email. It is slow, but it works.
What to do next
Get three things into your own name. The domain name, the hosting account and the website admin login. We do this handover work regularly as part of domain names and DNS management, and once the site is in your name we can look after it under website care and hosting while you hold the keys.
Does my web designer need to own the domain to manage it?
No. They can be listed as a technical contact or given access to the registrar account. The registrant should still be your business.
What if the domain is in a staff member’s name?
Transfer it to the business now while they are still with you. A registrant change is a simple form and avoids a problem later.
Can I lose a domain name just by letting it expire?
Yes. Once the renewal window passes the name can be registered by anyone. Set renewals to automatic and keep the payment details current.
If this is happening in your business and you would like it sorted, call DM1 on (08) 6202 6012 or send us a message. We look after IT, Microsoft 365, websites and domain names for Perth small businesses.