Who owns my website if an agency builds it for me?

There are four things to think about separately. The domain is your address on the internet and is the most important; whoever's name is on the registration controls it. The hosting account is where the files live. The website files and database are the actual site. The content, meaning your text, photos and logo, is your material regardless of who uploaded it. An agency can legitimately hold licences for tools it pays for, such as a premium plugin, but the domain and your content should never be in that grey area.

The usual trap in Islamabad and Rawalpindi is convenience. A designer offers to handle everything, registers the domain with their own email, puts the site on their shared reseller hosting, and the arrangement works fine until the relationship ends or the designer stops answering. Then the owner finds they cannot renew the domain, cannot move the site and cannot even log in to change a phone number. Getting a domain back from a former developer is possible but slow, and far easier to avoid at the start.

Protect yourself with three simple steps. Ask for the domain to be registered under your business name and an email you control, then log in once yourself to check. Ask for your own hosting account, or at least written confirmation that a full backup and all files will be handed over on request. And keep a list of every login in a safe place. With us the domain is registered to you from day one, and if you leave the Business bundle we hand over the files, the latest backup and every login.