Here's a question that sorts web providers faster than any portfolio: "If we part ways next year, what exactly do I walk away with?" Ask it before you sign anything. The wrong answers — and there are several flavors of wrong — all end the same way: a website you paid for that you don't actually own. Code, domain, hosting, content: four things, four separate ownership questions, and expats in Spain get burned on all four more often than locals, simply because checking is harder in a second language.
The lock-in patterns, ranked by damage
We've seen these repeatedly. None of them are illegal. All of them are expensive.
- The agency-owned domain. The classic. The agency "handles everything," which includes registering your domain under their registrar account. Three years and thousands of business cards later, your web address legally belongs to someone else. Getting it transferred ranges from awkward to impossible — especially if the agency has meanwhile dissolved, which small agencies do.
- The page-builder hostage. Your site lives inside a proprietary agency platform. Monthly fee: reasonable. Export function: none. The day you stop paying, the site vanishes — there is nothing to take with you, because there was never a "your site," only a subscription to theirs.
- The maintenance umbilical. The site is technically yours, but it's built so that only the original developer can touch it — undocumented, no access to code or CMS admin. Every text change is a €60 invoice. The rebuild quote from anyone else: €2,000–3,500, because starting over is cheaper than untangling.
- The content trap. Photos, copy, even your logo files live only inside the agency's systems. Rarely malicious, almost always chaos — and the result is identical: leaving means starting from zero.
The five-point ownership checklist
Run this before hiring anyone, in writing. Any professional will answer in five minutes; evasion is itself the answer.
- Domain: registered in whose name, at which registrar, and do I get the registrar login? (Correct answer: yours, and yes. Cost of a domain: €10–15/year — there is no legitimate reason for it to sit in someone else's account.)
- Hosting: whose account, and can I move the site to a different host? (Correct: your account, or a handover any time you ask.)
- Code: do I receive the source — a Git repository or at minimum a full copy — and may I give it to another developer? (Correct: yes, unconditionally.)
- Licenses: are there paid themes/plugins tied to the agency's license that stop working if we separate? (Correct: a written list, with costs.)
- Exit: if I leave in 12 months, what breaks and what does leaving cost? (Correct: nothing breaks, €0.)
Five questions, one signal. A provider who bristles at them is telling you how the relationship ends.
Why we hand over the repo
Our answer to question 3 is a Git repository with the complete source code, transferred to you at delivery. Not because we're saints — because incentives should point the right way. If keeping you is only possible by locking you in, the product isn't good enough; the €19/month maintenance plan has to earn its renewal every month. Same logic as our fixed public prices (they're on the pricing page): terms you'd agree to after reading the fine print, offered before it.
The honest counterpoint: you don't need code ownership in every scenario. If you're happily running on Shopify or Squarespace, you've traded ownership for convenience knowingly — that's a fair trade for many businesses, and migrating just to "own code" would be ideology, not strategy. The trap isn't using a platform; it's not knowing you're in one.
What this costs you to get right
Nothing, if you ask before signing — ownership terms cost providers €0 to grant, which is exactly why refusal is informative. Retroactively, it's messier: a domain transfer dispute can take months, and a locked-in site usually means rebuilding (€300–1,000 for a landing, per the market ranges in what websites cost in Spain). The cheapest lock-in is the one you never enter.
Frequently asked questions
The agency says code ownership "isn't standard practice." Are they right?
For custom-built sites — no, handing over source is entirely normal and you should insist. For platform sites (Wix, Shopify), they're technically right: there's no code to hand over, only exportable content. Which platform you're on is the ownership answer, so get it stated plainly.
I already suspect my domain isn't mine. How do I check in 2 minutes?
Run a WHOIS lookup on your domain (any free WHOIS site works). If the registrant organization is your agency rather than you — or hidden behind their privacy proxy — ask them today, in writing, to transfer it to a registrar account in your name. Friendly agencies do this in a week. The other kind, you want to find out about now.
Does owning the code mean I have to maintain it myself?
No — it means you get to choose who maintains it. Keep the original developer (we hope to earn that), hire any other, or let a technical friend handle it. Ownership isn't a duty; it's the option to leave, which is precisely what keeps your provider honest.
The short version
Four things must be yours: domain, hosting access, source code, content. Five questions, asked in writing before signing, protect all four — and the providers who fail them fail loudly. We hand over the Git repo at delivery and price maintenance at €19/month precisely so staying is a choice, not a sentence. If you want a second opinion on a proposal you've received, send it over on WhatsApp — we'll point out the lock-in clauses for free, even if you build elsewhere.