There’s a conversation I have with clients more often than I’d like, and it usually starts with something like “my website is down and I can’t get hold of the person who built it.”
Nine times out of ten, the problem isn’t technical. It’s ownership. The domain name (the thing that says who you are on the internet) is sitting in someone else’s account. Maybe it was registered by a web developer years ago, maybe it went into a hosting company’s reseller account, maybe nobody really thought about it at the time. But now there’s a problem, and the business owner has no access and no leverage.
Your domain name is your business address. If you move premises, you take your signage with you. Your domain should work the same way.
It’s not complicated to do this right. Register your own domain, in your own account, with a registrar you can actually log in to. Then invite whoever manages your website or IT to access it. That way, if you ever change providers, or if they disappear, you’re not starting from scratch.
Even if your domain is fully managed by an IT provider or web developer, make sure you are listed as the registrant contact. That is the failsafe: if anything goes wrong with your provider, it is the one detail that lets you prove ownership and regain control.
If you do not have a regular IT provider, the better option is to register the domain yourself with a reputable registrar, point it to Cloudflare’s name servers, and then grant your provider access there to manage DNS records. You keep ownership, they keep access, and neither side is locked in. If you would rather hand the whole thing over, our Domain & DNS management service does this for you while keeping you as the registrant.
If you’re not sure who holds your domain registration, that’s worth finding out today.
We can check your current setup and get everything transferred into an account you control.