Who owns your website? How a Launch-hosted site works
What you own, what you can change yourself, what comes to us, how it compares with Wix, Squarespace and WordPress, and what happens if you ever leave.
When you hire someone to build your website, the question that matters most usually comes up last: once the site is live, who controls it? Plenty of business owners find out years later that their web designer holds every login, that a simple update takes weeks, and that leaving feels impossible because nobody is sure what they would be leaving with.
This article explains how a website Launch builds and hosts actually works: what you own, what you can change yourself, what comes to us, how it compares with Wix, Squarespace and WordPress, and exactly what happens if you ever decide to leave. It is written for business owners, not developers, so no technical background is needed.
A website is five separate things
Most people think of a website as one thing. It is really five pieces, often from five different companies. A shop is a useful comparison: there is a street address, a directory listing that says which building is at that address, the building itself, everything inside it, and a mailbox.
| Piece | What it is | In the shop comparison | Common companies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain | Your web address, such as yourbusiness.com. Renewed every year. | The street address | GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace |
| DNS | The settings that point your address at your website and at your email | The directory listing | Cloudflare, or your domain company |
| Hosting | The computers that store your website and show it to visitors | The building | Vercel, WP Engine, Bluehost |
| Site software | What the site is built with, and where content gets edited | What is inside, and the keys to rearrange it | Custom-built, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace |
| Your @yourbusiness.com mailboxes | The mailbox | Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 |
The piece that matters most for ownership is the domain. Whoever controls the domain and its DNS settings decides where your website and your email point. If those are in your name, you can always move. If they are in someone else's name, you are relying on that person to let you go.
What you own, and what Launch runs
When Launch builds and hosts your website, everything that identifies your business stays in your name:
- Your domain, registered to your business and billed to you.
- Your DNS settings. We get access to make changes, but the account is yours.
- Your email. When a site moves, we make sure your email keeps working.
- Your Google accounts: Analytics, Search Console, and your Google Business listings. We are added as a user, never the owner.
Launch runs the hosting. Your site lives in our hosting account, and the cost is included in your monthly care plan. You never get a hosting bill, a usage alert, or an expired-card warning that takes your site down. Security updates and backups are on us too.
We split it this way on purpose. Owning your domain and accounts is what keeps you free to leave. Running a hosting account, on the other hand, is technical work that most business owners do not want, and it gives you nothing extra in terms of control.
What you can change yourself
Every Launch site comes with an Admin Panel: a private page where you log in and update your content. Changes go live in minutes, with no waiting on us. The rule of thumb is simple: if something on your site needs to change often, we can make it editable for you through the Admin Panel.
On every site, your team can:
- Edit the text in each page's marked sections: headings, paragraphs, short labels and numbers
- Add, edit or remove people, with a photo and bio, such as a new provider on the day they start
- Write and publish blog posts with a cover image, or take an old post down
- Swap photos in the spots made for photos
- Choose who on your team has access to the Admin Panel
- Choose who receives the emails your site's forms send
Depending on what your business updates often, we can also build in:
- Locations, with the address, phone number and hours for each
- Services, each added as a new page in a set layout
- An announcement banner, for things like holiday closures
- Job postings
- Testimonials and FAQs
- Directories, such as partner or member listings
- Order or sign-up forms, with a list of submissions to work through and reports you can download
- Product or link lists
What the Admin Panel is not
Your site is not a Wix-style template that your team can redesign by dragging things around. You fill in and update the content, and the design around it stays put. That is deliberate. It keeps the site looking professional and working well on phones no matter who edits it, and it means nobody can break the layout by accident.
What comes to Launch
Anything that changes how the site looks or works comes to us. You send the request, and we make the change, check it on the live site, and tell you when it is done.
- Changing the layout, colors, fonts or logo
- Adding a new page, or a new kind of page
- Changing the menu or footer
- Making something editable that is not editable yet, such as your clinic hours
- Adding or changing a form
- Connecting another service, such as online booking, a newsletter sign-up or payments
- Domain, DNS and email settings
- Anything that seems broken
Small changes are covered by your care plan. Bigger ones are quoted before we start.
How this compares with Wix, Squarespace and WordPress
Wix and Squarespace are do-it-yourself builders. You pick a template, drag things around, and they host it for you. You can change anything, including the design, which also means anyone on your team can break the layout. Your site has to fit what their templates and add-ons allow, and moving a site out of them later is hard.
WordPress is the one people find most confusing, because the name gets used for several different things. WordPress is free site software that runs a large share of the world's websites. It is not a host. It has to be installed on a hosting company's computers, such as WP Engine or Bluehost. It comes with an editor, and most WordPress sites add a theme for the design and plugins for extra features, each made by a different company. A developer usually sets it all up, and the theme and every plugin need regular updates to stay secure. So when someone says "my site is on WordPress", there is usually a separate hosting company, a theme and a handful of plugins involved too.
A Launch site is built specifically for your business. The parts you update often are editable in your Admin Panel, the design stays consistent, and there are no third-party themes or plugins to keep patched.
| Wix or Squarespace | WordPress | Launch site | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who builds it | You, from a template | Usually a developer, from a theme and plugins | Launch, to fit your business |
| Who hosts it | Wix or Squarespace | A hosting company you or your developer pick | Launch, included in your care plan |
| What you can change | Everything, including the design | Content, and often the design, depending on the theme | Content, in the places built for it |
| Upkeep | Theirs | Theme and plugin updates, by you or your developer | Launch's, included |
| Unusual needs, like orders, directories or sign-ups | Limited to their add-ons | Through plugins, with mixed results | Built to order |
| Leaving | Hard to move the site out | Can move to another host | Code and content handed over on request |
What happens if you leave Launch
You can leave whenever you want, and you take everything with you. Your domain, DNS, email and Google accounts are already in your name, so none of them has to change hands. The question most people ask next is: how do I edit my site after that? There are four paths.
1. Keep the site and keep using the Admin Panel
Your Admin Panel is part of your website, not a separate Launch tool. Once the site moves to a hosting account in your name or your new developer's, your team keeps editing text, people, blog posts and photos exactly as before. Any web developer can set up the new hosting from the instructions we hand over.
2. Hire any web developer for design changes
Design changes and new features need a developer, just as they do while you work with us. Launch sites are built with standard, widely used web technology, such as Next.js and React or plain HTML, with no proprietary builder underneath. Any web developer can pick yours up, and your handover instructions say exactly what it uses.
3. Move your content to a do-it-yourself builder
Your site cannot be uploaded into Wix, Squarespace or WordPress as it is. Each of those only runs sites built inside it, the same way a Word file does not open as a PowerPoint. What moves is your content:
- We export your content: text, photos, people and blog posts, in standard files.
- You pick a template in the new builder and put your content into it. Most of it is copy and paste.
- You point your domain at the new site. Your domain is already in your name, and the builder walks you through this step.
Do you need a developer for this? For Wix or Squarespace, no. They are built for owners to do this themselves, though some people hire help with the setup. For WordPress, usually yes, because it needs a hosting company, a theme and some setup.
4. Edit the site yourself with an AI coding tool like Claude
This is how Launch makes changes, and we can set you up to do the same in your own accounts:
- You open your own GitHub, Vercel and Claude accounts. Vercel's free plan is for personal projects, so a business site needs its paid plan.
- We move your site's code, content and photos into those accounts and connect them.
- We add an instruction file to your site that tells Claude how it works, what not to touch, and how to check a change.
- You ask Claude for changes in plain English, from your browser.
- Every change appears on a preview link first, and goes live only when you approve it.
You are editing real code this way, so it is less foolproof than the Admin Panel. The preview step keeps a mistake off your live site, and we are available by the hour if you get stuck.
What you get at handover
- Your domain, DNS, email and Google accounts: already yours, so nothing to transfer
- Your site's code, with written setup instructions
- Your content, photos and files, in a standard format any developer or builder can import
- Admin Panel logins for your team
- Launch's access to your accounts, removed once the handover is done
Five questions to ask any web designer
Whether or not you work with us, these questions tell you who really controls your website:
- Whose name is my domain registered under, and do I have the login?
- Who controls my DNS settings?
- Who is the administrator for my business email?
- What can my team change on the site without waiting for you?
- If I leave, what exactly do I get, and how long does the handover take?
If the answers are vague, or every account is in the designer's name, that is worth sorting out now rather than when you need to make a change.
If you would like a website you can update yourself and leave whenever you want, see our done-for-you websites or book a free discovery call.
