Who owns your website's domain, and how to get it back

Two things get called your website. One is the address people type, the domain. The other is the pages they see when they get there. They can belong to different people, and the address is the one that causes trouble. Whoever holds it decides where it points, and whether it gets renewed.

You tend to find out which is which when something goes wrong. The person who set it up stops answering, or the renewal reminder goes to an email address you've never seen.

Who holds a domain

A domain is held by its registrant: the person or business recorded against it. The company you pay for it, the registrar, manages it on the registrant's behalf.

So the question isn't who paid, or who built the site. It's whose name is on the registration. If a designer registered your domain in their own name, they hold it, whatever you've paid them since.

Find out whose name it's in

Look the domain up. For a .co.uk or .uk, use Nominet's lookup; Nominet runs the .uk register. For a .com, use ICANN's, at lookup.icann.org. Both show which company the domain is registered through, when it was registered and when it expires.

What a .co.uk lookup won't show is the registrant's name. So ask the registrar directly:

• Who is the registrant on this domain?
• Which email address is on the account?
• Can I log in to it myself?

If the answers are your designer's details, you know where you stand. If they're yours, make sure the email address is one you still read, because that's where the renewal reminders and the transfer codes go.

If it's in your name

You can move it to another registrar, or leave it where it is and point it at a new site. Pointing it is usually simpler: registrars let you change where a domain points, and nothing has to be transferred.

A .com. If your registrar doesn't let you get the transfer code yourself, ICANN's rules say it has to give it to you within five calendar days of asking. It can't refuse just because you're in a dispute with it over payment. It can refuse a transfer within 60 days of the domain being registered or last moved. After a change of registrant it can lock the domain for 60 days, unless you opted out before the change. So if you're doing both, move it first and change the details after. ICANN's board adopted a review of these rules in June 2026, and hasn't said when the changes will take effect.

A .co.uk or .uk, until 9 February 2027. Ask your registrar to move it. If it can't, the registrant can do it through Nominet's Online Services by entering the new company's tag, for £10 plus VAT. The new company has up to five days to accept, or the request times out.

A .co.uk or .uk, from 9 February 2027. Nominet is changing how .uk is run on that date. A domain will move the way a .com does, with a transfer code. Nominet's registry sets each code to last no more than 14 days. Check Nominet's current guidance before relying on the steps above after that.

Email. If your email uses the same domain, it depends on records the move can disturb. Wix, for one, says business email stops working after a transfer away from it until the email records are added again. Before you move a domain, make sure you know who looks after your email.

If it's in someone else's name

Then it has to be transferred to you, and the person holding it has to start that. For a .co.uk it's a Registrant Transfer. Their registrar can do it, or they can start it in Nominet's Online Services for £10 plus VAT. You then get an email and have five days to accept. For a .com it's a change of registrant through their registrar.

Ask in writing, with the domain and the name and email address it should be in.

If a registrar is the problem. Nominet's complaints page lists, among the things its agreement with registrars is meant to stop, "Registrars registering domain names in their own name without the explicit permission of the registrant". It also lists registrars not transferring domains when asked. The route is the registrar first, then Nominet's customer services. That's for a registrar. A designer who registered the domain in their own name, through their own account, is the registrant, which is what the next part is for.

Nominet's dispute service. For a .uk domain, an independent expert can order it transferred to you. You need rights in the name, which Nominet's policy defines as rights you can enforce, under English law or otherwise. You also have to show the registration is abusive. The policy lists one possible sign of that: a domain registered through a relationship between you, which you've used exclusively and paid for. Since 7 July 2026 new cases are run by WIPO, and an expert's decision costs £750, with no VAT.

For a .com. The equivalent is the UDRP. You need a trade mark the domain matches. You also have to show the holder has no legitimate interest in it, and registered and used it in bad faith. At WIPO it starts at US$1,500. WIPO's own overview says panels have tended to turn down disputes that are really about a business or a contract, as outside the UDRP's scope. That leaves the courts.

If it lapses

A .co.uk or .uk doesn't vanish on its expiry date. Under Nominet's current rules:

• up to 30 days after expiry, it keeps working and can be renewed;
• from 30 to 90 days, your website and email stop, but it can still be renewed;
• from 90 to 95 days, it can't be renewed;
• after that, it's deleted, and anyone can register it.

From 9 February 2027 the periods change, to up to 45 days, then 30, then 5. Registrars have to send at least one expiry notice 30 days before, to their customer. If the customer is your old designer, the notice goes to them, not you. And if your registrar has stopped trading, Nominet will renew a .uk domain directly, for £80 plus VAT.

For a .com it varies by registrar, with two fixed points. For at least the last eight days it can be renewed, it stops working. And once it's deleted, there's a 30-day period when it can still be restored.

What you own besides the address

In UK copyright law the person who creates a work owns it unless they've assigned it in writing. The government's guidance on commissioned work says the same. A court may find you have a licence to use what you paid for, for the purpose you paid for it.

So the words you wrote and the photos you took are yours. A design, or words the designer wrote, may not be, unless your agreement says so.

Where the site lives matters too. Wix says a site built on it has to stay on its servers. Squarespace lets you export some of your content as a file for WordPress, but not the design. Either way, you can take your words and photos and start again, and the domain can follow you.

Before you pay anyone for a site

Ask whose name the domain will be registered in, and get it in yours, with your own email address on the account and a login you can use. The other questions worth asking first are in how much a website costs.

Where grafter.ly fits

We sell websites, so read this part knowing that.

We don't register domains. If you have one, you keep it where it is and connect it to a site of ours. We show you the records to add at your registrar and check them for you. Those records are for the website only, and your email on the domain is left as it is. If you don't have a domain, your site is at your-name.findagrafter.com.

When you connect a domain, we look it up in the registry itself: Nominet for .uk, Verisign for .com. We tell you which company it's registered through and since when. Nominet doesn't show an individual's name, so the registrar is what we can tell you. If it looks as though the domain sits with whoever built your old site, we give you an email to send them. It asks them either to give you access to the domain's settings or to add the records for you. If the domain is in their name rather than yours, it also asks them to put it in yours. The website side is here.

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Sources. Nominet's .uk WHOIS service (looked up 14 October 2026, which also gives the 9 February 2027 date for its closure), and Nominet's help pages on switching registrar, transferring a domain to someone else, a registrar that's no longer available and complaints, read in the Internet Archive's copies from January to October 2026 because Nominet's sites refuse automated reading; its Dispute Resolution Service Policy (dated 20 March 2024); and its registrar pages on obligations, the expiry process and the February 2027 transition. WIPO on .uk disputes and their fees, UDRP fees and its overview of UDRP decisions. ICANN's Transfer Policy, Expired Registration Recovery Policy, UDRP, the move from WHOIS to RDAP and the board's resolution of 7 June 2026. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 11 and section 90, and the government's guidance on ownership of copyright works. Wix on transferring a domain away and moving a site; Squarespace on transferring a domain away and exporting a site. All checked 14 October 2026. The .uk rules change on 9 February 2027, so check Nominet's own pages after that date. Nothing here is legal advice.