Author:
Lorraine Terry
Changing agency wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. Really, it wasn’t. But your incumbents have decided to drag their feet because – well, just because, and it’s all turned into a bit of a nightmare.
You call, you email, you call again, and you still can’t get them to hand over the digital keys to your online presence.
What are you supposed to do now?
At Advance Online, we’ve handled the transition of hundreds of customers’ websites from their previous marketing providers. We know how to make it go smoothly and what to do when it doesn’t. In this article, we explain how to get control of your website from a previous agency.
First, let’s take a look at what exactly you need to get control of:
Follow these four steps in order to get back in the digital driving seat.
Before you get started, see what info and access you already have. Can you log into WordPress? Do you have access to your domain registrar (like GoDaddy or Namecheap)? Who’s paying the hosting bill? Try searching your mailbox for key terms and put together the clues for what lies where and belongs to whom.
Send a professional but clear message to your current provider. Something along the lines of:
“I’m moving all website assets under my business name and need access to the domain, hosting, CMS logins and third-party systems. Could you please share those or start the transfer? Thanks.”
Sometimes asking nicely is enough.
This should be registered under your name, not the agency’s, but you can double-check this using Whois Lookup. If it’s under their name then you’ll need to transfer the ownership to yourself. Contact the place where your domain name is registered (such as GoDaddy or NameCheap) and they should be able to help. Typically, they will ask you to prove ownership of your business before they make the transfer, but that should be a problem.
This should be registered under your name, not the agency’s, but you can double-check this using Whois Lookup. If it’s under their name then you’ll need to transfer the ownership to yourself.
Contact the place where your domain name is registered (such as GoDaddy or NameCheap) and they should be able to help. Typically, they will ask you to prove ownership of your business before they make the transfer, but that should be a problem.
If your site is hosted on a hosting service such as SiteGround or Bluehost, then you can try contacting the service directly to see if they can provide you with the login details.
If your website lives on the agency’s servers, which is common, then the agency owns that space and you’ll need to move your website to a new server. A full migration would require your previous agency to cooperate, so if that’s not happening, you may have to ask a web developer to clone or rebuild the website. At least then you have a clean break.
Unless they’ve built the website on a proprietary CMS – i.e. they’ve developed their own code and software, which is unlikely – they don’t ‘own’ the CMS.
Unfortunately, they can guard it closely by withholding the login credentials. As above, if your previous agency isn’t cooperating, you may have to rebuild the website or take the legal route.
Chances are, if you weren’t happy with what they were delivering, the website could do with some freshening up anyway.
If you’re still in the dark about what needs to happen, seek advice from your new provider, who will be experienced in such matters and motivated to help.
When people ask this question, they usually mean ‘Do I own the copy, images and overall design of the website?’.
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t always a straightforward ‘yes’.
Sure, you paid for the photos, the words and the design work, but unfortunately, it all depends on what it says in your contract. For example, here at Advance Online, we always offer ownership of the website to our clients. However, we know that some other agencies don’t.
If the contract states you have definitive ownership, then that’s clear, and if it doesn’t, you might be in murky water.
Going through a messy digital divorce once is more than enough. Luckily, there are steps you can take to protect yourself and your assets in the future.
Gaining control of your website from an obstructive provider can be a frustrating experience, but with organisation, patience and a little know-how, you might be surprised how much you can claw back.
Here at Advance Online, we’ve managed hundreds of website transfers and we know how to get the job done. More than that, we make it clear in our agreements that should we later part ways (heaven forbid!), the customer owns the website. That way, there’s no stress before, during or, if it comes to it, after our agreement.
Want to find out more about what we have to offer? Then book a meeting in the below calendar. We would love to hear from you.
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