Do you have to pay monthly for a website, and what do you own?

No, not to a web designer. Hosting is a monthly cost whoever builds the site, but a monthly fee to a designer is a payment method, not a rule. Three things get called your website, and they are owned separately: the domain, the site files, and the Google records. Check all three before you sign.

We sell pay-monthly websites, so read this with that in mind.

What stops working the month you stop paying?

That depends on who holds each part, and nobody can tell you from the outside. Hosting is the part that bites first: on your own account the pages keep serving, and inside a provider’s account the site can go dark the day a payment fails. The Business Profile is separate again, because Google holds it.

Our own answer is published, so you can hold us to it. Our terms say you can cancel any time by emailing us, and that there are “no exit fees, no minimum terms beyond the month you have paid for, and no clawback on work already shipped”. Essentials is £49 a month and Growth is £79 a month, with £0 setup and 30-day money back, all listed on the page that publishes our plan prices. Our prices do not carry VAT, because we trade below the UK VAT threshold.

That is our position, not a market rule. Before you sign anywhere, get those answers in writing. Ask who holds the mail forwarding or the mailboxes on your domain, and how those records move if the plan stops. Ask who holds the registrar account and who pays the renewal, and get both put in your name. Our guide on how to word that request when a provider has stopped replying sets out what to ask for.

What does it cost to hold your own domain and hosting?

A domain is £10 to £20 a year and hosting is £5 to £30 a month. Both are ranges we see quoted in 2026, not a published statistic. That is the least it costs to keep your site alive on your own.

If a provider tells you the site cannot leave, the cost of leaving is not the obstacle. Access is. A monthly fee that includes the domain and the hosting is fine. The questions above get you whose name the registration carries and who holds the registrar account.

How do I check who owns my site in Search Console?

Only an owner can read the full owner list. Google’s help page on managing owners, users and permissions sets out the levels. An owner “Has full control over properties in Search Console. Owners can add and remove other users, configure settings, view all data, and use all tools.” A full user “Has view rights to all data and can take some actions.” A restricted user “Has simple view rights on most data.”

To read your own level, open the Settings page and find the Ownership verification row. Everybody else’s sits on the Users and permissions page, which Google says “is visible only if you’re a property owner”; once you are one, “The Permission row will show each user’s permission level.” The same page states that “A property must have at least one verified owner, or no users will have access to the property.” Read on Google’s page on managing owners, users, and permissions, checked 5 September 2026.

That gives you three answers. Either your name is on the owner list or it is not. If the property will not open for you at all, that answers one thing only: your own Google account is not an owner on it. Google says you must be an owner to see anyone else’s level, so it tells you nothing about a colleague’s account or a former staff account. A provider sitting there as a full user is a normal working arrangement. If you are nowhere on it, ask for a Google account of yours to be added as an owner on the property that already exists.

You do not have to wait for that answer either, though what you get is a different thing. If you control the domain or the DNS records behind it, you can verify ownership yourself through your domain name provider, and Google’s condition on that route is “You must have a custom domain name, or control your domain name.” Google also says that route is “required only for Domain property (example.com) not URL-prefix properties”, so it gives you your own Domain property and your own data, not a place on the owner list of a URL-prefix property somebody else set up. It takes nothing away from anyone, because “Multiple people can verify ownership of the same website property, using the same or different verification methods.” Read on Google’s page on verifying site ownership, checked 5 September 2026.

How do I get the Google Business Profile put in my name?

The current primary owner has to hand it over, and nobody else can. Google’s page on the transfer states “Only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership”, and adds “Only owners can change access roles for other owners and managers.” The route is your Business Profile, then More, then Business Profile settings, then People and access, then the person, then Edit next to Access, then Primary owner, then Save.

If you are switching provider, the timing matters. The same page says “The new owner or manager of a Business Profile must wait 7 days before they can manage all the features.” Read on Google’s page on transferring primary ownership of a Business Profile, checked 5 September 2026.

Be specific, because vague wording is what leaves it half done. Do not ask for access. Ask for your Google account to be made the primary owner of the profile. Ask while the relationship is still working, because the person who can do it is the person you may be about to stop paying.

What if a former provider still holds your Business Profile?

You ask Google. The current holder then gets a short window to answer. Google’s page on requesting ownership says to go to business.google.com/add, enter your business name and address, pick the business from the list, choose Request Access, complete the form and submit it. “The current profile owner is then notified by email and has 3 days to respond.”

Three outcomes follow. Approved, and you get management access. Denied, and you can still suggest edits to the profile and may be able to appeal. No answer inside 3 days, and you may have the option to claim the profile by verifying the business yourself. Read on Google’s page on requesting ownership of a Business Profile, checked 5 September 2026.

Keep a record of the date you sent it, because the notification lands in an inbox you do not control.

Will you lose your Google results when the site moves to new hosting?

Your page addresses are what Google indexes, and a hosting change does not move them. Google’s guide is “only for migrations that don’t affect the user-visible URL”, and it defines the move as “switching hosting providers or moving to a content distribution network (CDN)”. It still warns of “a temporary drop in Googlebot’s crawl rate immediately after the launch, followed by a steady increase over the next few days”.

Hand these lines to whoever does the work. Google says to “Consider lowering the TTL to a conservative low value (for example, a few hours) at least a week in advance”. The TTL is how long the internet is allowed to remember your old server’s address, so lowering it means the switch takes effect in hours rather than days. And before the move goes live it says to “remove any such blocks from the new copy of the site when you’re ready to start the move”, meaning a robots.txt disallow that keeps Googlebot off a test copy, or a page-level no-index rule or response header that stops the test copy being indexed. A block left in place after the move is the item to check on the day. Read on Google’s guide to changing your hosting, checked 5 September 2026.

We will not promise you a position through a move. You can arrange a dull one instead: the same URLs, a lowered TTL a week ahead, and somebody watching Search Console for a fortnight afterwards.

Does the law make a web provider put any of this in writing?

The unfair trading rules do not reach a business buying a website. The DMCCA 2024, Part 4 Chapter 1, is headed “Protection from unfair trading”, and it defines a consumer at section 225(3) as “an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside the individual’s business”. A business buying a website for its business is not a consumer under that definition, and that chapter imposes no duty to put your terms in writing.

The subscription rules people expect sit in Part 4 Chapter 2, headed “Subscription contracts”. They govern “a contract between a trader and a consumer”, and Chapter 2 defines a consumer at section 280(1) as “an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside the individual’s business”, so they will not cover a business buying a website whenever they start. Read Chapter 1 on the DMCCA 2024 unfair trading chapter and Chapter 2 on the DMCCA 2024 subscription contracts chapter, both checked 5 September 2026.

Neither chapter reaches you, so neither one makes a provider write any of this down for a business buyer. You have to ask, and ask before you sign. Five lines in one email:

• Ask who the domain is registered to, in the registrar’s own record, and get the answer in writing.
• Ask whether you will be a verified owner on the Search Console property from the day the site goes live.
• Ask whether you will be the primary owner of the Google Business Profile, or only a manager.
• Ask what you receive if you cancel, in what file format, and within how many working days.
• Ask where the enquiries your contact form collects are stored, and whether you get an export in a file you can open.

If a provider will not answer those in writing, ask why before you sign.

What is in your name if you buy a plan from us?

Four records are named in writing, and the two Google records are not. On our monthly plans the domain is “Registered in your business name from day one”, the site files are “Real HTML, CSS and templates, not a proprietary builder database” handed over “as a folder of files”, and the analytics accounts are “in your name, with us added as a user, not the other way round”.

That same list also says of the DNS: “You hold the registrar login. We ask for access, not for ownership.” All four sit in full in the ownership section of our own monthly plan. Cancelling sits in our written terms instead, which say we will “Hand over a working copy of the site source and content within seven working days.” We set out the work behind them on what one person does on a site each month.

The two Google records are not named on those pages, so put them in the same email you would send anyone else. You can run the checks above yourself, at any time.

One person does the work. Our home page says “the same person takes your brief, builds the site, writes the copy, and maintains it after launch”, with no hand-off to an outsourced studio and no account manager between you and the work.

Does it matter where the person building your site is based?

It changes nothing about who owns what. We work from East Dulwich in south London, and the page listing the south London areas we reach in person names them. The written terms and the owner lists decide who is named, wherever the person sits.

Ask any provider for those answers in writing, near or far, and judge them on the answers rather than the postcode.

If it would help to know where you stand today, send us your domain name and we will tell you which of these checks we can run from outside, which ones need your own login, and what to ask your provider for in writing. We will send it back as a plain list, with nothing attached.

Written and checked by Verithora, a one-founder web studio in East Dulwich, London SE22.

This is a plain-English summary of the rules as we read them on 5 September 2026, not legal advice.