Who owns my website code? Whoever can change the deal.
Not just “can you leave,” but can someone change the deal while you stay?
Ownership is not the export button. It is the terms.
“Who owns my website code” is the question people type, and the answer most platforms give is a paragraph about the export. That answers a different question. Whether you can leave matters; whether the arrangement can be rewritten while you stay matters more, because leaving is a project and staying is the default.
So the test asks about the deal. Who sets the price, and with how much notice. Who decides which features are on your plan next year. Who can retire the template your client’s site is built on. If the answer to each is “not you,” you do not own the site. You occupy it.
That is the whole of the rent argument on this site, in one letter. Rent is not the fee. Rent is the fact that the fee, and what it buys, can change without your signature.
The deal changes, and you were notified.
You can check this in an evening with the documents you already agreed to. Open the terms of service for the platform your client sites are on and search for the section on changes. Read who may change the price, the plan and the service, and how you are told. A line that says the terms may be updated and that continued use is acceptance is the test result.
Then make it concrete. Take the fee for one client site and write down what happens to your margin, or to the client’s invoice, if that fee were different next year. You do not need to predict the number. You need to notice that the number is not yours to hold still.
Then ask the handover question. If the client asked for their site tomorrow, what would you send them? A folder that runs anywhere is ownership. An archive of assets and an invitation to rebuild is a receipt for something you never held. What you would actually send is documented platform by platform: a Wix site cannot be handed over as files, a Squarespace export is one .xml built for WordPress, and a Webflow ZIP comes without the CMS.
The change clause
Find the section that says how the terms, the price and the plan can change. Note who decides and how much notice you receive. That paragraph is the deal.
The template’s future
Ask whether the template your client’s site depends on can be retired, and what happens to the site when it is. “We’ll migrate you” is a roadmap, not a guarantee.
The handover
Run the export you would send a departing client and open it. What runs on its own, and what needs the platform to run? The second list is what you do not own.
Leaving is a project. Staying is where the deal changes.
A folder of files has no terms of service. Nobody can change it but you.
On the owned stack the site is a repository and a build. The output is a folder of static files. The host is a place to put the folder, chosen for a free tier that will outlive most agencies, and replaceable in an afternoon if its terms change. There is no template licence, no plan tier, no feature that can be moved above your price. The stack is that folder and the build that makes it.
Ownership on the owned stack is therefore a boring fact rather than a promise. The deal cannot change while you stay, because nobody but you is party to it. The client gets the folder, the repository and the build command. Handover-ready is not a feature. It is what the site already is.
The one deal that remains is the one between you and the client, written by you. That is the ownership question answered the way it should be: in a document you drafted, not one you clicked through.
The deal can’t change while you stay, because there is no deal.
Ownership is where the rent lives. Data is where the records do.
Control
Can you change how the system behaves, or only what the settings panel exposes?
Data
Do your records live in your database or someone else’s?
The full test runs all five, with the assembling word and the rule: pass all five, or don’t build on it.
Read the sharpest chapter first. It costs an email.
We’ll send the build-gate chapter in full: the checks, the code, and the reasoning. Read it. If it doesn’t change how you think about shipping client sites, you’ve lost ten minutes and kept a working release gate.
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