Nine questions to ask before you let anyone build your site.

There is no shortage of lists of questions to ask a web designer. Nearly all of them are about the work: your process, your timeline, your portfolio, how many revisions. Reasonable questions, and you should ask them.

None of them are the questions that determine whether this relationship can end cleanly. Those are about accounts, and they are worth asking before anyone starts, because every one of them gets harder to ask once work is underway and impossible to ask once it has gone wrong.

For each one below: what a good answer sounds like, and what should make you slow down. None of the concerning answers means you are dealing with a bad actor. They mean the arrangement is built a particular way, and you should decide that on purpose rather than discover it in a year.

1. Whose name is the domain registered in?

Good: yours, in an account you open, billed to your card, before anything else happens. They can be given access to manage it.

Concerning: "we handle all that for you". Handling it is fine. Holding it is not, and this is the single asset where the distinction decides everything else.

2. Who is the account owner on the hosting?

Good: you, billed directly to you, with them added as a collaborator you can remove.

Concerning: hosting is bundled into a monthly fee with no separate account in your name. That is a reseller arrangement. It is a legitimate business model, but it means the site lives inside their account and leaving means moving.

3. Where does the source code live, and who owns that repository?

Good: a repository owned by your business, with the code committed there from the first day rather than delivered at the end.

Concerning: "we will send you the files when we are done". A zip file at the end of a project is a snapshot, not a history, and the version you are given is the version they choose to give you.

4. Will you assign me the copyright in writing?

Good: yes, in the agreement, signed before work starts.

Concerning: any version of "that is not necessary". It costs nothing to write down when everyone is friendly. The only time it matters is the one time it matters.

5. Who will own the analytics property?

Good: an account in your name, with them added as a user.

Concerning: they create it under their agency account "for reporting". Analytics history cannot be reconstructed after the fact, and it does not travel with the site.

6. Who will own the Google Business Profile?

Good: you own it, they are added as a manager.

Concerning: they create it or claim it under their own account. Your reviews and your local presence live there, and for a lot of local businesses it drives more enquiries than the website does.

7. What exactly do I get if I leave tomorrow?

Good: a specific list. The domain, because it is already yours. The repository, because it always was. Admin on hosting, analytics and the business profile. A named person to hand over to.

Concerning: a general reassurance. "You would get everything" is not a list, and the disagreement later will be entirely about what "everything" included.

8. Is any part of this built on something proprietary to you?

Good: a straight answer, either way. Proprietary components are not automatically a problem as long as you know which parts they are before you buy.

Concerning: a site on a platform only they can edit, licensed for as long as you keep paying. That is a rental, and rentals are fine when you know you are renting.

9. Can I see something you built that you no longer maintain?

Good: yes, here it is, and here is who runs it now.

Concerning: hesitation. A firm that has never let a client leave with the work intact has either never been tested or has an answer it would rather not give.

Why these and not the usual ones

Timelines slip, scope changes, and designs get argued about. All of that is recoverable and most of it is normal. Ownership is the one category where the cost of getting it wrong is not proportional to the size of the mistake, because you find out at the exact moment you have the least leverage.

The whole list takes ten minutes to ask. Anyone who is set up correctly will answer it quickly and without friction, because for them these are facts rather than negotiations.