The Indextrialist

This post is a warning post for all companies and website owners. Too many times I have run into clients that do not own their own domain name, website files and/or website content. Most of the time this occurs because these people do not know better and are taken advantage of by web design firms, web hosting firms, other providers or sometimes disgruntled former employees.

The fact is that your company should always own everything related to their website. The cost of a domain is $10 per year and when you buy the domain make sure it is in the company’s name and that more than 1 person has access to that domain. This way if someone leaves the company, the domain is still in the company’s control and they can just change the password.

If you outsource your website design, development or content make sure that you get full rights to the website content and files. Always get this in writing. The only time you do not get this control is for proprietary programming code that is part of your website. In that situation you can set up a licensing agreement for that proprietary programming code if you are no longer with that company.

The issue arises when these companies want to do work to their website including SEO or a website redesign, move to another hosting provider or just take back control of your domain or website. This other organization can hold your company hostage. They can make you stay with them or pay an exorbitant fee to gain back control of your domain or website.

I have dealt with clients that had former employees or partners who purchased the domain name for the company steal the domain name and not relinquish control unless they are paid a hefty sum. Or other times when you are changing web design firms and the current firm states that they own all the website files so the company is forced to start from scratch. Another scenario is when SEO firms optimize your website, but if you end the contract with them they remove all the work they did for you.

There should be no reason why you do not own everything related to your website.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 @ 7:25 pm on the category Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.