THE EVERYDAY BUSINESS · · 1 min read
Your domain, your accounts, your keys.
The most expensive line in a website project is the one nobody wrote down: who owns what when the work is done.
The domain is yours
Register it in your name, on an account you can log in to. A studio can manage the settings, but the registration should never depend on a relationship staying friendly.
So is the money
Payments run through a merchant account you own. Fees, payouts and customer refunds are between you and the provider. A studio wires the checkout to it; it does not sit in the middle of your revenue.
Hosting and content, too
Your site should live on hosting you can see, with content in a system you can edit without asking permission. If you ever want to take the work elsewhere, the move should be a handover, not a rescue.
Write the list at the start
Before anything is built, list every account the project will touch and whose name it sits in. It takes ten minutes. It saves the awkward conversation two years later when someone has left and nobody can find the password.