What does it cost to
leave?
The cost of leaving is decided on the day you sign, not the day you go. Here is what ownership is actually made of, what makes a site expensive to walk away from, and the short list of accounts that should have your name on them.
Decided on
The day you sign
Accounts in your name
From day one, here
Goes home with you
All of it
- Not one thing
Ownership is
seven accounts.
People ask whether they own their website as if it were a single object. It is not. It is a domain registration, a DNS zone, a hosting or platform account, the code, the content, an analytics property, and every advertising account spending your money. Each one can belong to a different party.
So the useful question is not "do I own my site". It is: whose name is on each of those seven, and could I move all of them tomorrow without needing anyone's cooperation? Write the list down and answer it line by line. Most people discover they can answer three.
Access is not ownership. Being able to log in to something somebody else created is a permission, and permissions can be withdrawn — usually at the exact moment a relationship is ending, which is the one moment you need them. The fix is not distrust; it is that the account is created in your name in the first place and access is granted outward from you.
- The real costs
What makes a site
expensive to leave.
Machinery only one studio can run. A content system built in-house by your supplier is a perfectly good product right up until you want someone else to work on it.
Content that will not come out. Text and layout locked inside a page builder frequently cannot be exported as anything usable. Moving then means retyping, and retyping is billed by whoever is doing it.
A licence that ends with the subscription. Some designs and templates are rented. Stop paying and the right to use the look stops with it. This is ordinary and it is rarely hidden — it is just rarely read.
A domain in someone else's account. The single most expensive line on this list, because until it is resolved nothing else can move. Check yours today. It takes two minutes and it is the one that strands people.
- How it works here
Built so leaving
is cheap.
The accounts are in your name from the first day — domain, hosting, analytics, ad accounts — and I am granted access to them rather than the other way round. The code is written for the business and handed over whole. There is no proprietary content system, no plugin stack, and nothing whose licence expires when an invoice stops.
Which means leaving costs close to nothing, and that is on purpose. A build starts at $7,500 and runs about six weeks, and the reason to stay after it ships should be that the work is good, not that going is expensive. Ongoing work exists for the months when there is a next layer worth doing; plenty of these sites never take it.
If you are weighing a move right now, the audit reads where you actually stand: $500 to $1,500, sized to the business, and the deep read credits in full against a build. It tells you what is portable and what would have to be rebuilt, in writing, whether or not you ever work with me.
- Asked plainly
The ownership
questions.
Who owns my website?
Read your agreement, and if there is not one, that is the answer. Ownership is not one thing: the domain, the hosting account, the code, the content, the design licence, the analytics and the ad accounts can each belong to someone different, and often do. The test is not what anybody says on a call. It is whose name is on each account, and whether you could take all of it somewhere else tomorrow without asking permission. Here, all of it goes home with you when the work ships, and the accounts are in your name from the first day.
What does it cost to migrate a website?
That is decided by how the old site was built, not by how far it is going. If the code, the content and the accounts are already yours and exportable, moving is mostly careful work: stand it up somewhere new, check every address still resolves, cut the DNS over. If the site lives inside a proprietary platform, a page builder or an account in someone else's name, the cost is whatever it takes to rebuild what cannot be exported — which is why the honest quote for a migration starts with an inventory rather than a number.
What should be in my name before I sign anything?
The domain registration. The DNS, wherever it is managed. The hosting or platform account. The analytics property. Every advertising account, including the ones an agency creates to run your spend. Your business listing. The mailbox. You can grant anyone access to all of these; the point is that access is granted by you and can be withdrawn by you. An account created in a studio's name and shared with you is not the same thing, and the difference only shows up on the day you leave.
What makes a site expensive to leave?
A proprietary content system only one studio can run. A page builder whose output cannot be exported as usable content. A design or template licence that ends when the subscription does. A domain registered in someone else's account. Analytics history you cannot take. None of these are scandals — they are ordinary products with ordinary terms — but together they are the difference between changing suppliers and starting over.
Can I take my site to another developer?
If the code and the content are yours and portable, yes, and any competent developer can pick it up. That is the real test of whether something was built for you or around you: could a stranger read it and carry on. Ask a prospective studio directly what a handover looks like and who would be able to work on the result. A straight answer takes one sentence.
What if my current developer stops answering?
Work out what you can reach on your own before you chase them. Can you log in to the domain registrar? The hosting? The analytics? If yes, you have options today and this is inconvenient rather than serious. If no, the first job is recovering the accounts, and a registrar or platform will usually help the person who can prove the business is theirs. Get that far before commissioning anything new, because the recovery decides what the new work has to replace.
Can someone read my current setup and tell me where I stand?
That is what the audit is for: $500 to $1,500, sized to the business, and the deep read credits in full against a build. It reports what the site is built on, what is portable, whose name things appear to be in from the outside, and what it would take to move. You get that document whether or not anything else follows.
The scan below reads what your current site is built on in about twenty seconds, which is the first line of the inventory. For the rest of it, send the URL.
What a site costs to build · Rebuild or repair? · What I hold myself to · matthewdscott7@gmail.com
- Live pulse audit, free.
Any URL. Five checks.
The same module behind the paid audit, run against your URL. Twenty-five free runs a day from this browser.
- On contact. Taking work now.
Bring the brief.
I'll bring the receipts.
Have a site? Send the URL and I come back with what I see. No site yet? Tell me what the business does and what it needs, and the reply starts with questions, not a pitch. Either way, you hear back within one business day.