What Happens When Your Web Guy Disappears

The websites I'm asked to look at are rarely broken in the way people expect. They're not ugly and they're not slow. They're frozen — and it happens to every kind of business I build for. The hours are wrong, the phone number is two numbers ago, there's a staff member on the team page who left in 2023 — and nobody can change any of it, because the person who built it isn't answering and nobody knows where it lives.

This is the most common failure in small business websites and it has nothing to do with code. It's an ownership problem, and it's entirely preventable, and almost nobody checks until it's already happened.

How it happens, without anyone doing anything wrong

Nearly always the same way, and usually with no villain in it.

You hired someone. They were good. To get you going quickly, they bought the domain on their own card and set the site up under an account of theirs — genuinely to be helpful, because it's faster than walking a client through six signups on day one. It worked. The site went live. Everyone was pleased.

Then two or three years went by. They moved on to a full-time job, or got busy with bigger clients, or moved away. Maybe they'd answer if you could reach them. Maybe the email you have is the one they stopped checking.

And now the thing that represents your business publicly is inside an account you've never seen, paid for by a card that isn't yours, and there's no obvious way in.

The worst version of this is the domain, because the domain is your address. If it's registered to someone else and it comes up for renewal while they're not paying attention, it lapses. When a domain lapses it becomes available, and there is an entire industry that watches for exactly that. You don't get a grace period from the person who buys it.

The ten-minute check

Do this now, for your own business. Four questions.

1. Whose name is on the domain? Search for a "WHOIS lookup" and put your domain into it. A lot of registrations use privacy protection, so you may not see a name — in that case, the real question is whether you can log in to the registrar account yourself. Do you know which company it's registered with? Do you have the login? If both answers are no, you do not currently control your web address.

2. Can you get into the place the site lives? Whatever it's built on — a website builder, a host, a content system — can you log in today, right now, without asking anyone? Try it. Not "I think I have that somewhere." Actually try it.

3. Whose email is on the accounts? Log in and find the account owner's email address. If it's not one of yours, that's the account holder. Password resets go to them. If they're gone, the resets go somewhere you can't reach.

4. Who does the billing card belong to? If it isn't your card, you have no notice when something is about to expire. The first sign will be the site going down.

If you scored badly on those, you're not in an emergency yet. You're in the window before one, which is the good time to fix it.

Fixing it while you still can

If the person is reachable, this is a friendly conversation and not an accusation. Most developers will hand things over without any fuss — it's often just never come up. What you're asking for is a transfer of the domain to an account in your business's name, ownership of the hosting or builder account, and whatever else is attached: the analytics, the form provider, the email. Ask in writing, so there's a record of what was asked and when.

If they aren't reachable, it's harder but usually not hopeless. Domain registrars have a process for disputes and for recovering a domain when you can prove the business is yours, and it's worth starting that early rather than waiting for a renewal date. The site itself can be rebuilt if it has to be — annoying, and it costs money, but survivable, and you can see what that costs before you panic about it. The domain is the piece that can genuinely be lost, so start there.

How I do it, and how you should ask anyone to

Your domain gets registered in your name, on an account that belongs to your business, on day one. Not transferred later — that's a promise that depends on somebody following through. Registered that way at the start, when it costs nothing to do properly.

Same for the rest of it: the email, the analytics, the payment account. Your business, your name, your card where a card is needed. I'm a user on them, not the owner, and if I vanished tomorrow you'd change a password and carry on.

And at handoff you get the list. Every service, what it does, which login it's under, written in plain English rather than as a folder of screenshots. Boring to produce and boring to read, and it is the single most valuable thing in the whole handover.

Nothing here is generous. It's the minimum, and you should expect it from anyone you hire — including from me. It's written into every package I sell.

The part that's actually about trust

There's a version of this business that works by making it hard to leave. Hold the domain, keep the logins, be the only one who knows how it fits together, and your client stays because the cost of going is too high. I've seen it, it's effective, and it's why some people are wary of hiring anyone for this at all.

I'd rather you could leave. If in three years you decide somebody cheaper or closer or better should take this on, you should be able to hand them a list of accounts you already own and have them pick it up in an afternoon. Nothing about that arrangement stops me being useful to you. It just means you're staying because you want to.

The reason I'm the one writing this is that I'm not going anywhere — I run CageList, it's mine, I'm still the one answering when something breaks on it, and this is what I do rather than something I do between jobs. But you shouldn't take my word for that. You should hold the accounts. Then it doesn't matter whether you took my word for it.

If you've just done the ten-minute check and it went badly, tell me what you found and I'll tell you what I'd do about it, whether or not you end up hiring me.