Who owns your domain name?
Your website can be rebuilt and your hosting can be moved. Your domain name is the address on your van, your cards and every email you have ever sent. It is worth five minutes to check it is really yours.
3 November 2026
The short answer
The owner of a domain is whoever is named as the registrant on the record, not whoever paid for it or set it up. If that is your web designer, a former employee or a company that no longer exists, you do not fully control your own address. It is usually easy to fix while everyone is still on good terms, and much harder afterwards.
Two different things: owning and managing
A domain has a registrant, the person or business it legally belongs to, and an account at a registrar, the company it is bought and renewed through. They are often mixed up. Your developer having the login to the registrar account is fine, if you can take it back. Your developer being the registrant is not, because then the domain is theirs.
For addresses ending in .uk, the registry is Nominet, and the registrant is the legal owner. For .com and most other endings the same idea applies under the rules set by ICANN, the body that oversees them.
How to check
- Look it up. Free public lookup tools, listed at the end, show the registrar and, for many domains, who it is registered to. Personal details are often hidden for privacy, so you may only see the registrar.
- Find the renewal emails. Whoever gets the "your domain is about to expire" reminders is usually whoever controls the account.
- Ask the registrar. If you can log in, the account will show the registrant's name. If you cannot, ask whoever set the site up for the login, in writing.
What goes wrong
It expires. The renewal card lapsed, or the reminder went to an old email address. The site and your email stop working, and after a grace period the name can be bought by someone else.
The person holding it has gone. A designer stopped trading, a staff member left, a relative who set it up is no longer around. Recovering a domain without the registrant's help is possible but slow, and needs paperwork.
It is held over you. Rarely, a dispute over a bill turns into a refusal to hand the domain over. That is far easier to prevent than to undo.
Putting it right
- Registrant in your business's name. For a limited company, use the company's exact registered name. For a sole trader, your own name.
- Your email on the account. One you will keep for years and check, not a personal address of whoever built the site.
- Auto renew on, for several years. With a card that will not expire next month.
- Transfer lock on. Most registrars offer a setting that stops the domain being moved without your say so.
- Write it down. The registrar, the login, and when it renews, kept somewhere more than one person can find it.
If the domain is in someone else's name, they can change the registrant to you. For .uk addresses Nominet runs this as a registrant transfer for a small fee; for other endings the registrar handles it. Either way, the current holder starts it and you accept.
A good habit
When you hire anyone to build or host a site, agree in writing that the domain is registered to you from day one. We do this for everyone on our hosting plan: the domain is yours, in your name, and if you ever leave, you take it with you. It is one of the questions in what to ask before you hire a developer.
Where this comes from
- Changing the owner of a .uk domain: Transferring your domain name, Nominet.
- Looking up a domain: ICANN Lookup.
Not sure who holds yours?
Send us the address. We will look it up and tell you what we can see and what to ask for.
Or email us at
hello@moonlathetechnologies.com