Your site is rented from an agency: how to take back control

Before anything else, check one thing: whose name your domain name is registered in. Everything else — the files, the design, the subscription — follows from that answer. If the domain is yours, you are free. If it is not, that is the first thing to recover, before any conversation about a redesign.

How to check, in two minutes

Go to a public whois lookup and type your address. Look at the “registrant” field. If you see your company name, good. If you see the agency’s name, or a privacy service you never asked for, that is your starting point.

If the field is hidden, ask your provider in writing: “who is the registrant of the domain?” A straight answer is a good sign in itself.

What they owe you, and what they do not

It depends entirely on what you signed. In a rental arrangement, the provider is often entitled to keep the site itself — the design, the templates, the code.

But two things are almost always yours: your content — your texts, your photos, your logo — and your domain, if it was registered in your name or paid for by you. Ask for them explicitly, in writing, and give a date.

The right order

1. Recover or transfer the domain. Nothing serious can happen before this.
2. Save the content: copy every page’s text, download every photo at the largest size available, list the page addresses.
3. Build elsewhere, quietly, while the old site stays online.
4. Switch over, with a redirect from every old address to its new one.
5. Only then, cancel the subscription — never before the new site is live.

What it costs

The detail of what we keep and what we rebuild is on the website redesign in Châtel-Saint-Denis page.

Usually less than people fear, because part of the content already exists. What costs is not the rebuild — it is the weeks lost arguing with a provider who has no interest in answering quickly. Which is why the domain check comes first.