Legal Landmine: Not All Web Designers are Alike - Who Owns Your Website?

When working with a web site designer, it’s important to have an agreement in place that indicates who owns your newly created website (and in some instances your domain name) after completion. (YOU WANT TO OWN IT)

I have had clients who unfortunately did not read their contract or never clarified the ownership issues with their web-designer and were struggling to accept the fact that the web-designer had specified that they-not the client-owned the website and would not allow anyone else to work on the website without their approval.

In a couple of instances my clients, if they wanted to “own” their website, had to start from scratch and hire another web-designer (with the ownership issue clarified) to do a whole new website all over again Incurring all of the expenses of starting fresh and recreating what they’ve already paid for once.

So before you start working with someone, make sure you have a contract that says when finished, you own the site and domain and save yourself some headaches in the future!