Who Owns Your Online Store? Five Things That Must Be in Your Name

You own your online store only if five things are registered to you, on a login you control: the domain, the payment account, the store's owner account, the business email, and your data in a form you can export. If a builder, freelancer or relative holds any one of them, you are renting part of your business from that person — and you usually find out the day you need it back.

How it goes wrong

Almost nobody sets out to lose control of their store. It happens through convenience. The person building it registers the domain on their own account because it is quicker. They create the store under their email so they can get to work before you have made an account. Months later they move on, change jobs or stop answering, and the domain renewal notice goes to an inbox you cannot read.

None of this needs bad intent, and none of it is hard to prevent. It just has to be settled before launch, not after a falling-out.

The five things

1. The domain

Your domain is your address, your email and every link anyone has ever shared to your shop. Register it in your own name, at a registrar you log into, with renewal billed to your card and auto-renew switched on. A builder never needs to own it. They need you to add a few DNS records, or temporary access to do it themselves. On ShopsWired, for example, connecting a custom domain comes with automatic SSL, so the work on your side is pointing the domain, nothing more.

2. The payment account

This is where your money lands, so it is the one to be strictest about. The payment processor account should be opened in your business's name, verified with your details, and paying out to your bank account. If your builder needs to configure it, give them access as a separate user and remove it after launch. Never accept a setup where sales flow through someone else's account and get passed on to you.

3. The store's owner account

Every store platform has one top-level account that can add and remove everyone else. That account should be yours. Your builder, your bookkeeper, or anything else that works on the store gets its own login with its own access, which you can switch off without changing anything else.

4. The business email

Password resets, payout notices, platform warnings and customer replies all go to email. If the address that controls your accounts belongs to someone else, they effectively control the accounts too. Use an address on your own domain, and make sure you are the one who can log into it.

5. Your data and content

Your products, customer list, order history, photos and written content are the business. Ask before you sign: can I export all of it, in what format, and at any time? Check the photos too. If a builder or photographer shot them, get it in writing that you can keep using them after the project ends.

A handover checklist

On launch day, before the final invoice is paid, you should be able to tick every one of these yourself:

• I can log into the domain registrar, and the domain is in my name with auto-renew on.
• I can log into the payment account, and payouts go to my bank.
• I hold the store's owner account, and I know who else has access.
• Every account above uses an email address I control.
• I have done one export of products and customers, and opened the file.
• I have a written note of where everything is and what each part costs each month.
• I have been shown how to make everyday changes without asking anyone.

The export is the step people skip. Doing it once, while the builder is still around to help, proves it works before you ever need it.

What a builder can reasonably keep

Ownership does not mean holding every piece of technology yourself. A managed platform runs the servers, the security updates and the checkout software, and that is the point of paying for one. Your builder keeps their own tools and their own working accounts. What has to be yours is the account at each service, the money, and the exit: the ability to take your data and leave.

That is how we work, too. On the stores we build and migrate, the store, the code and your data are yours to keep, and you can export everything at any time. If you are moving an existing store, our store migration page covers what moves with you.

The honest trade-offs

• Owning accounts means owning the admin. Renewal emails, two-factor codes and the occasional billing question land with you. That is the price of being in control.
• "You own the code" matters less than it sounds. For most small stores, the accounts and the data are what protect you. Source code you would never run yourself is a weaker safety net than a working export.
• Fixing it later is slow. Moving a domain or a payment account out of someone else's name can take days or weeks, and needs their cooperation. Starting in your name costs nothing.

If you are still choosing who to hire, our guide on what to send and what to ask a store builder puts these questions into the brief from the start.