Your web designer has gone quiet. What to do, in order
If your web designer has stopped answering, do three things in this order: find out what you still control, save a copy of the whole site today, and get the domain into your own name before you send the angry message. The order matters, because a designer who feels accused can lock you out of the one thing that cannot be rebuilt.
It usually starts small. You ask for a change and hear nothing. You ask again a fortnight later. Then you notice the last reply was in March.
Sometimes the site sits there working away, still showing last year's prices. Sometimes it has stopped loading altogether and you found out from a customer.
Whichever version you are on, the mistake is starting with the argument. Do the securing first.
First, find out what you still control
Three accounts decide how this goes: the domain, the hosting, and wherever the site's files live. You may hold all three without knowing it.
The domain. Run your web address through any free whois lookup and read the registrant name. That name is who the address belongs to. Not who paid for it, and not whose business it points at.
The hosting. Check your bank or card statement for a recurring payment to a hosting company. If the money is leaving your account, the host will talk to you.
Your email. If your business email ends in the same domain, it is on the same clock as the site. That raises the stakes, so find out now rather than later.
Our guide on who actually owns your website goes through each of the three in more detail.
Second, save a copy of everything today
Do this before you send a single message, and do it even if you are confident the site is coming back to you.
Open every page of your own website and save what is on it. The words about your business. The photos of your own jobs. Your reviews. Copy the text into a document on your phone or your computer, and save each image by holding your finger on it or right clicking.
It takes an evening. Once it is on your own device nobody can take it back off you, and it is the single biggest thing deciding whether a rebuild later takes one week or four.
Third, secure the domain before the conversation
The order matters most here.
If the domain is registered in your name, log in to the registrar, change the password, turn on auto renew and make sure the contact email is one you actually read. You are safe. Everything after this is negotiation rather than risk.
If it is registered in their name, ask for the transfer plainly, before you raise anything else:
Can you move the domain into my name when you get a chance, I'm tidying up the business records.
Most people just do it, because it is routine admin and costs them nothing. What loses you the domain is opening with a complaint, because it tells someone who is already avoiding you exactly how much leverage they are holding.
If they do not reply at all, the registrar has a dispute process for this. It is slow and it will want proof the business is yours, so start it earlier than feels necessary.
What you can get back without them
- The domain, if it is in your name, or through the registrar's process if it is not
- The hosting, if you are the one paying the bill
- Your content, if you saved it while the site was still up
- Your Google Business Profile, which is a separate account with its own recovery route and often survives all of this untouched
What you probably cannot
If the site was built inside a platform that does not let sites leave it, there is no copy to hand over, because one never existed. Cancelling ends it. The builder is not being awkward. That is how that kind of build works, and it is worth knowing before you spend three weeks asking.
The same goes for anything only they ever logged into. The analytics account, whatever service the contact form runs through, any password never shared with you.
When to stop chasing and rebuild
Chasing takes weeks. A rebuild takes weeks. The difference is what you are holding at the end of them.
Rebuilding is usually the better call if the site is four or five years old, if you have been asking for the same change since spring, or if it was never bringing you work in the first place. In that case the silence has done you a favour and saved you the conversation about replacing it.
The one thing that must not be lost is the domain. Every other part can be made again.
Getting it right on the next one
Three things, agreed before money changes hands. The domain registered in your name from day one. A copy of the files any time you ask for it. What happens to the hosting if either side walks away, written down.
None of it costs a builder anything, which is worth remembering if someone resists.
If you are in the middle of this now
Send us the domain and we will tell you what state it is in, who it is registered to, whether the site is recoverable and what a rebuild would involve, free of charge.
We have picked up sites from people who stopped answering before.
Read next
Who actually owns your website?
Three things decide it, the domain, the files and the hosting, and most owners have never checked any of them.
What happens when your domain quietly dies
We found dozens of businesses whose website address no longer loads. Most of them have no idea. How to check yours in two minutes.
Have a website already?
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