Choosing a web designer in Portsmouth: who owns the domain, the hosting, the code and the email

Choose a web designer in Portsmouth on five answers before you look at a single design: whose name the domain is registered in, whose account the hosting sits in, who holds the copyright in the code, who is the administrator of your email, and which password your website uses to send you enquiries. The right answers are your business's legal name, an account you can log in to or a written right to leave with a working copy, an assignment of copyright in the contract, you, and a credential that belongs to your site alone. A designer who will not put those answers in writing is renting you a website, however good the portfolio looks.

Why the layers matter more than the design

The design is the part you can see, and it is the easiest part to change. The layers underneath decide the harder things: whether you can leave, whether your email keeps working when the site changes, and how far a problem at the designer's end spreads to you. When a business tries to move on from a designer, the design is rarely what stops it. A domain in someone else's account does, or an inbox whose settings nobody wrote down.

Our guide to what a Portsmouth business should spend asks whether the site is yours. This one takes that question apart layer by layer, with what to ask and how to check the answer without taking anyone's word for it.

Each layer, who should hold it, and how to check

The domain: whose name is on the register

A .uk name is registered with Nominet through a registrar, and the person or company it is registered to is the registrant. Nominet's guidance to registrars says a limited company should be entered by its registered name and a sole trader by their real name, and that a trading name alone is not enough. Changing the registrant after the fact is a process of its own. So a domain the designer registered in their own name "to save you the bother" stays theirs until that process is done, and it is a far easier conversation on the first day than on the day you leave.

Do not rely on a public lookup to settle it. Nominet's lookup shows which registrar manages a .uk name, but shows the registrant's details only if the registrant opted in, so it tells you where the domain sits and not whose it is. Only a login to the registrar account answers that.

The code: copyright stays with whoever made it unless you agree otherwise

The Intellectual Property Office's guidance on copyright ownership says the first owner of a commissioned work is the person or organisation that created it, not the commissioner, unless you agree otherwise in writing. Without that agreement you may have only an implied licence to use the work for the purpose it was made for. A website is several works at once: the code, the design, the words the designer wrote and any photographs they took. Paying the invoice does not move any of them to you.

Ask for a clause that assigns copyright in everything made for you, and for a working copy of the site that another developer could run. On a hosted site builder the question changes: what you can take with you is set by the platform's terms, so read them before the build, not after. Our own builds are set up the way the web design page describes: the domain in the client's name, the code, words and photographs theirs, hosted on our server, and a working site to take away if they leave.

Email: the layer the website quietly touches

Your website and your email share the domain's DNS. The MX records tell the world where your mail is delivered, and the SPF and DKIM records let receiving servers check that mail claiming to come from you really does. Google's email sender guidelines have required, since 1 February 2024, that anyone sending to Gmail addresses set up SPF or DKIM for the sending domain. A designer who moves the site and rebuilds the DNS without carrying those records across can put your quotes, and your replies to customers, in the spam folder or nowhere at all.

So there are two email questions. Who is the administrator of the mailbox account? That should be you, with the designer added only if they need to be. And will the designer list every mail record before a DNS change and check them after it? A yes to both, in writing, covers most of the risk.

The password that sends your enquiries

Every contact form sends its message through a mailbox, and the website needs a password to use it, usually an app password: a separate password the mail provider issues so a program can send without the main login. Between 19 and 25 October 2026 that went wrong for us. One app password, shared by every website form we ran, was abused to send phishing from our mailbox. Deleting it stopped the sending at once and broke every form at once, and rotating it across 33 apps took about three hours. Since 26 October every website has its own app password, so a leak names its source and revoking it breaks one form instead of all of them.

The lesson for anyone hiring a designer comes down to one question: which mailbox does my form send through, with which password, and whose other sites use the same one? A shared credential makes your enquiries depend on the weakest site on the designer's books. Certificates need the same attention: on our own tools portal a login gate blocked the renewal path, the certificate expired on 8 October 2026 and we found it on 31 October, so ask who checks the expiry dates and how.

Search Console, Analytics and the profile: you own, the designer uses

Google's Search Console help separates owners from users and says only an owner can add or remove people; if every verified owner is removed, everyone else loses access after a grace period. Google Analytics needs the Administrator role to add or change users, and the last administrator cannot remove themselves. A Business Profile can have several owners but only one primary owner. The safe pattern is the same in all three: you hold the top role, the designer holds a working one, and parting company means removing them rather than asking them for your own data.

Local or remote matters less than what is written down

We build Portsmouth sites from Wrexham, and we would not pretend distance is irrelevant: a designer on the island can call in and see the shop. None of the answers above depends on where the designer sits, though. A designer on Albert Road with your domain in their name leaves you more exposed than one in another part of the country with it in yours. Put the five questions in an email, ask for the answers in the reply, and keep that email.

If you want a second opinion on what you hold now, send your current set-up through the quote form and we will tell you, layer by layer, which ones are in your name.