12 Things You Must Check in a Website Contract — Before You Lose Your Domain
Legal checklist before commissioning a website. Code ownership, domain, hosting, intellectual property, SLA — what must be in the contract and what agencies don't tell you.
A business owner runs an estate agency. In 2023 he parted ways with his web agency — invoices weren’t paid on time, the relationship broke down. When he asked for the domain and hosting to be transferred, he was told: “The domain is registered to our account; the contract doesn’t provide for transfer.” Lawyers estimated that recovering the brand and SEO standing would cost 20,000 PLN and 6 months of work.
This isn’t an exception. It’s an industry standard.
Three Scenarios Where You Lose Access to Your Site
Scenario 1: Domain registered to the agency’s account. The most common problem. The agency registers the domain in their name — “for convenience.” You terminate the contract, the agency keeps the domain. Your brand, your organic traffic, your inbound links — all gone.
Scenario 2: Hosting inaccessible after termination. The site is on the agency’s server. You stop paying the subscription — the site disappears. Even if you have the code, you have nowhere to deploy it without help from the same developer.
Scenario 3: Intellectual property not transferred. Under copyright law, rights to code belong to the creator unless the contract states otherwise. Without a transfer clause — technically, you cannot modify the site without the author’s consent.
12-Point Checklist: What Must Be in the Contract
Ownership and Rights
1. Transfer of economic copyright — the contract must explicitly state: “The Developer transfers to the Client the entirety of the economic copyright to the source code, graphic designs and content created under this contract.” Without this, you’re a tenant, not an owner.
2. Domain ownership — the domain must be registered in the client company’s details (company registration number) or a verified representative’s name. Check the WHOIS registry before signing the contract.
3. Ownership of the hosting account — hosting on your account (Vercel, Cloudflare, cloud provider — whichever, what matters is whose account). Login credentials handed over on delivery day.
4. Repository handover — the git repo (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket) must be transferred to you on the day of technical sign-off. Not “on request,” not “after the final invoice” — on delivery day.
Deadline and Scope
5. Delivery deadline with a date — not “approximately 4 weeks,” but a specific date. “Production deployment shall occur by [date].” Dates are enforceable — demand them.
6. Delay penalties — a contractual penalty for each day of delay on the developer’s side. The market standard is 0.1–0.5% of the contract value per day. Without a penalty — a deadline is a declaration, not a commitment.
7. Revision scope — how many design revisions are included in the price? How many rounds of content changes? What happens beyond that? Without this clause, “unlimited revisions” for the developer may mean two, while for you it means twenty.
8. Acceptance definition — what criteria must the site meet for the project to be signed off as accepted? Lighthouse score? Number of subpages? Forms working correctly? No definition = disputes.
Post-Launch Support
9. Free corrections period after launch — minimum 30 days for corrections arising from developer errors, without additional charges.
10. SLA — response time for a critical error (site is down). Without an SLA you have an email address and hope.
Data and Security
11. Access handover — a list of everything you receive on delivery day: FTP/SFTP, hosting control panel, DNS panel, CMS access (admin), repository access, analytics tool access. Write this as an annex to the contract.
12. Personal data (GDPR) — if the site collects data (contact form, newsletter, cookies) — the contract should contain a data processing agreement clause, or confirmation that the developer does not process data on your behalf.
Red Flags in Conversations with Developers
- “The domain stays with us for security” — no. Your brand, your domain.
- “IP rights are obvious, why put it in writing” — put it in writing. Obvious things don’t end up in court; missing clauses do.
- “Deadline depends on your feedback turnaround” — partially OK, but the final date must be in the contract.
- “Hosting included in the monthly subscription” — check whether, on cancellation of the subscription, you retain access to the code and files.
QA10 delivers all 12 points as standard. Git repo, hosting panel and DNS access on delivery day. Deadline with a contractual penalty. 24h SLA for 3 months post-launch. No hidden subscriptions and no domain sitting “just in case” in the agency’s account.