Your website domain belongs to whoever is listed as the registrant at the company it’s registered with (the registrar), and in practice to whoever can log in to that registrar account. For a lot of small businesses, that turns out to be a former web designer, a relative who set it up years ago, or an employee who has since left.
You can check in a few minutes, and fixing it often takes no more than a few polite emails. Below is how to check, the full list of accounts a business should hold in its own name, how to get a domain back, and the one rule for moving a site without breaking email. This is practical advice, not legal advice. It’s also the groundwork for any small business website, new or old.
How to check who owns your domain
Look it up
Go to ICANN Lookup and enter your domain. Since January 28, 2025, ICANN uses RDAP, the newer lookup system, as the official source of registration data for domains like .com, .net and .org, replacing the old WHOIS service. Most people still call it a WHOIS lookup.
The result shows:
- The registrar: the company the domain is registered with.
- Dates: when it was created and when it expires.
- Status codes: for example, whether a transfer lock is on.
- Name servers: where the domain’s DNS records are managed.
The registrant’s name and email are usually hidden for privacy. So the lookup tells you where to look, not always who the owner is.
Check the registrar account
Search your email for the registrar’s name and for “renewal”. Whoever gets those emails, or pays the renewal, probably controls the account.
Log in, open the domain and find its contact details. Check two things:
- Registrant name or organization: it should be your business’s legal name, not a person’s name and not a web company’s.
- Registrant email: an address the business controls, ideally one that doesn’t depend on a single person, like an office or admin address on your own domain.
While you’re in, turn on two-step sign-in, turn on auto-renew, and make sure the card on file is current. An expired card on file is an easy way to lose a domain by accident.
Check where DNS is managed
The name servers in the lookup tell you where your DNS records live. Names ending in wixdns.net mean Wix, for example. DNS can sit in a different account from the registrar, and that account needs an owner at the business too.
Why the domain has to be in the business’s name
The registrant is the holder of record. Transfers, renewal notices and disputes all go through the registrant and the registrant’s email. Under ICANN’s rules, it’s the registrant who can request the transfer code to move the domain, and the registrar must provide it within five calendar days.
If someone else holds that role and they leave, close their business or stop answering, you can lose more than the website. Your email runs on the same domain. So do the links on your trucks, cards and Google profile.
A web person can still have the access they need. Add them as a user or delegate on your account. Don’t let them become the registrant.
The accounts a business should own itself
The domain is only one of the accounts your website depends on. For each one, the business should be the owner or top administrator, and outside help should get the lowest access that does the job.
- Domain registrar: the business as registrant and account holder, with auto-renew on.
- DNS host: if it’s separate from the registrar, an account in the business’s name.
- Website platform or hosting: the business as site owner, with the developer added as a collaborator. Wix can transfer a site to another Wix account, but payment details don’t move with it, and Wix Payments accounts can’t be moved between accounts at all. That’s a good reason to set it up under the business from the start.
- Email (Google Workspace or Microsoft 365): a super admin who works at the business.
- Google Business Profile: the business as primary owner. Agencies should be managers, who can edit the profile but can’t add or remove users.
- Google Search Console: a verified owner from the business. A designer can be a full user.
- Bing Webmaster Tools: the same setup as Search Console.
- Google Analytics: an Administrator on the account from the business.
- Ad accounts: Google Ads, Meta and any others, with the admin and billing in the business’s name.
- Social pages: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and the rest, with at least two admins from the business.
- Payment processor: Stripe, Square, PayPal or your platform’s own, in the business’s name with payouts to the business’s bank.
Keep a one-page list of each account, the login email, who has access and when it renews. Store the passwords in a password manager, and give outsiders their own logins instead of sharing yours. A good web person asks to be added as a user. We don’t ask for passwords by email.
If someone else already controls your Google Business Profile, Google has a request ownership process. The current owner gets three days to respond, and if they don’t, you may be offered the option to claim the profile, though Google says that isn’t always available.
How to get your domain back from a former web person
Start with the friendly route and work through it in order:
- Ask in writing. Ask them to change the registrant to your business and either move the domain into an account you own at the same registrar, or send you the transfer code. Give a date. Settle any fair, unpaid bill first.
- Move it into your account. With the code, open an account at the registrar you want and start the transfer, then approve the confirmation emails. A same-registrar move between accounts is often quicker and needs no code.
- Expect a waiting period. ICANN’s rules let a registrar refuse a transfer within 60 days of registration or a previous transfer, and a registrant change can add a 60-day lock unless the holder opts out first. ICANN is revising these rules, so check its Transfer Policy and your registrar’s help pages for what applies now.
- Go to the registrar if they don’t answer. Support can tell you what proof they accept. Business formation papers, invoices showing you paid for the domain, and emails about it all help. Each registrar has its own process.
- File a complaint if a registrar won’t follow the rules. ICANN takes transfer complaints.
- Talk to a lawyer if the holder refuses and the registrar can’t help.
Don’t let the domain expire and hope to buy it afterward. The current holder may renew it, or someone else may register it first.
Before anything moves, copy every DNS record: a full export or screenshots of the zone. That list is what keeps your email working, which brings us to the next rule.
Change web records, never email records
When a website moves to a new host, only the records that point the web address need to change. That’s usually an A record for the bare domain and a CNAME record for www.
Everything else stays put:
- MX records route your email. For Google Workspace, Google’s current MX value is
smtp.google.com, and accounts set up before 2023 may still use older values starting withaspmx. Both work. Leave whichever you have. - TXT records hold your email security settings (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) and verification codes for Google, Microsoft and other services. Delete a Search Console verification record and that verified owner can lose access.
The risky step is switching name servers, because that moves every record to a new DNS host at once. Any record not copied over first stops working. If someone tells you to switch name servers, ask them to copy every existing record first, then check that the MX and TXT records match afterward. Either way, send yourself an email from an outside address once the change is done.
This is a fixed rule in how we work: when we connect a domain, we change only the web records, and email records stay as they are.
Put ownership in writing
Before you hire anyone, make the contract say:
- The business is the registrant and account owner for the domain, website platform, email and analytics.
- The developer works through user access, which is removed or reduced when the work ends.
- Who owns the design, text, photos and code once they’re paid for. Under US copyright law, work by an outside contractor generally stays with the person who made it unless a signed agreement transfers the rights to you, or the work qualifies as a work made for hire. The Copyright Office explains this in its circular on works made for hire. Ask a lawyer to word this part.
- A handover on request: logins, files and a list of every account.
Planning a new site? Collect this access first. It saves weeks in any website redesign.
If you’d like a hand
If you’re not sure who holds your domain or your accounts, we can go through the list with you and say what to move into your name before any work starts. Send us your domain name through our contact page. More on what a new site needs is on our small business websites page.
