You should own the domain, the accounts, and the content
You should own the domain, the Google accounts, and the content when you hire a web or marketing shop. If you leave, the name, the logins, and the pages come with you. An agency that “holds everything for you” is not protecting you. They are holding the keys.
That is the whole trust test. Not a fifty-question checklist. Three things you can name out loud before you sign.
Why this gets messy
A lot of Iowa shops find out too late.
The domain renews to an email at the old vendor. Google Business was set up under a freelancer’s Gmail. The Facebook page admin left with the password. The “website” only lives on their hosting panel. You ask for a backup and get a shrug — or a fee that feels like a ransom.
None of that is dramatic until you need to leave. Then it is Tuesday, the phone is ringing, and you cannot change your own hours.
Upley’s line is simple: you own the accounts. We mean it literally.
The domain
The domain is the name. It sits at a registrar — GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, whoever. That account should be yours. Your email. Your login. Your renewal notice.
If they registered it in their name “to make it easier,” fix that before you depend on the site. Moving a domain after a breakup is a month of proving you are the business. Moving it on day one is a form.
Ask: who gets the renewal email? If the answer is them, you do not own the name yet.
The accounts
Google Business Profile. Search Console. Analytics if you use it. The Facebook or Instagram page. Ads accounts if you run ads.
Those should live under a login you control, or under a business account where you are the primary owner. A vendor can be a manager. They should not be the only person who can get in.
When someone “sets up Google for you” under their personal Gmail, you are a guest on your own listing. Guests get locked out when the relationship ends — or when that person quits the agency.
Same rule for hosting logins and the CMS. You should be able to log in, change a page, and hand the keys to the next person without opening a ticket.
The content
The photos from the job. The pages about the work. The posts. The copy on the site.
That material is yours. You paid for the jobs. You (or we, for you) wrote the pages. On exit you get the files and the database — a real backup, not a screenshot of the homepage.
If the only place the words live is inside their proprietary tool, and they will not export them, you were renting a brochure.
Content you own can move to a new host. Content trapped in someone else’s system cannot.
What “on exit” should look like
You give notice. You get:
- the domain already in your registrar account
- admin access to Google, social, and ads — or a clean handoff with you as owner
- a zip of the site files and the database
- the content library: pages, posts, images
There should not be a surprise fee for “releasing” what was always yours. A reasonable charge to package a backup is fine. A lock because they hold the keys is not.
We work so that handoff is boring. Boring is the goal.
What this is not
This is not a rant about every agency. Plenty of shops do ownership right. Ask early. Write the answers down. Good partners will not flinch.
This is also not the full hiring quiz — CMS, builders, shared hosting, who pays for a hack. Those questions still matter. This post is the short version: name, logins, words. If those three are yours, you can fix almost everything else later. If they are not, nothing else matters when you need to leave.
A quick check for next week
Log into the domain registrar. Confirm the email is yours.
Open Google Business. Confirm you are an owner, not only a manager under someone else’s account.
Open the website CMS. Confirm you can edit a page without calling anyone.
If any of those fail, fix it while the relationship is still friendly. Waiting until you are angry is how people lose a year of work.
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Book 30 minutes → /half-hour-meeting/ aaron@upley.com · 319-535-2508 · from $115/month