What should you check in a website contract before you sign?

Before you sign, check seven things in writing: who holds the domain and hosting accounts, who owns the code, design and copy and how that ownership transfers, which assets are licensed from third parties and in whose name, what happens at termination, what you receive at handover, what renews or changes in price, and who supplies and approves the content. Each item should be named specifically, not covered by a general phrase. Have your own attorney review the ownership and intellectual property language.

Website proposals often get read for price, page count and timeline. The clauses that decide whether you can leave with your site tend to sit further down, in sections with titles like ownership, intellectual property, or term and termination. Those are the sections to read slowly.

This checklist is general information for business owners in any industry. It is not legal advice and does not replace a review of your specific contract by your attorney.

Ownership clauses: name every piece

A clause that says "the client owns the website" sounds complete and often is not, because a website is several separate things. Look for language that names each piece and says whose account or name it sits in.

Watch for the word license in any of those rows. A license is not a transfer. A contract can let you use a site for years without ever making it yours, and the difference only matters on the day you want to leave.

Copyright language to bring to your attorney

The U.S. Copyright Office's Circular 1 states that copyright initially belongs to the author who created a work, and that a transfer generally must be in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed (or the owner's authorized agent). That is one reason to have your attorney read the wording of the ownership clause closely.

Contracts often say the work is a "work made for hire." According to Circular 30, a commissioned work from a non-employee qualifies only if it falls within one of nine categories listed in the law, and the parties expressly agree in a written instrument that both sign. If a requirement is missing, the work is not a work made for hire. Whether a website fits any of those categories is something only your attorney should answer for your contract. A reasonable question to bring to that review is whether the agreement also needs a written assignment of copyright, and whether the vendor keeps rights to any reusable tools or code it brings to the project.

Third-party assets and their licenses

Some parts of any site are never fully owned by anyone involved in the build. Stock photos, premium fonts and paid plugins are licensed from the companies that make them. The question for the contract is whose name each license is in. A license held in the vendor's account may stop covering your site when the vendor relationship ends, even if everything else transfers. Ask for a list of every licensed asset and confirmation that each license names your business.

Termination, handover and what renews

Read the end of the relationship as carefully as the start. Look for the notice period, the date service ends, what the vendor delivers at the end (files, exports, credentials), in what format, by what date, and whether a handover fee applies. Check how long the old site stays live after notice, so you have time to switch the domain. Then read the renewal terms: whether the agreement renews automatically, how much notice canceling requires, and whether prices can change at renewal.

If the vendor will register the domain on your behalf, ask which registrar it will use. ICANN's page on registrant benefits says a registrant is entitled to accurate and accessible information about its registrar's terms and conditions, including pricing, and shall not be subject to false advertising or deceptive practices by its registrar, including deceptive notices and hidden fees. Those protections are easiest to use when the registrant is you.

One test cuts through long clauses. Ask your team: "If this vendor closed its doors next year, which sentence in this contract tells us how we get our site back?" If nobody can point to one, that is the clause to add.

Scope, content and a fictional example

The contract should also say where the words come from. "Client to supply content" and a scope that includes interviews and drafts describe two different projects at two different workloads. A writer should not have to invent what your business knows, so the scope should spell out how that knowledge gets gathered, who drafts each page and who approves it before launch.

Here is a fictional example from two industries. A physical therapy clinic in Michigan reviews a contract that says "client owns all content" but says nothing about the design or theme files. Its attorney asks for language covering the files and their delivery at termination. A fictional family law firm in South Carolina finds that its contract is clear on ownership but that the premium font on every page is licensed in the agency's name. The firm asks for the license to be bought in its own name before launch.

For comparison, here is Hudson South's position. The client owns everything: the domain registered in the client's name; the hosting account in the client's name (Netlify, the WordPress host, or Squarespace); the site's files (code and theme files on Netlify and WordPress, or, on Squarespace, the account and everything published on it); all copy, the page library and the structured data; the Hudson Twenty-One profile and the research; and analytics and Search Console accounts in the client's name. Stock photos, premium fonts and paid plugins belong to their vendors and are licensed in the client's name so they carry over, and in regulated industries the licensed professional still approves content, even at the Hands-Off level. The levels are Foundation, Authority, Ongoing and Hands-Off, and every build runs Authority Asset (approved business knowledge and evidence), Hudson Twenty-One (how the business communicates across 21 dimensions), Market Intelligence (buyer questions and the market) and AEO Creation (answer-first content), in that order. See the website builds overview for platforms, and pair this checklist with the questions to ask a web designer before hiring.

Read the contract with the site in view

On a free 30-minute call, we compare your current site with the competitors your buyers look at, which helps you judge what a new build should cover.

Sources

1. Copyright Basics (Circular 1). U.S. Copyright Office. Read 2026-10-17.
2. Works Made for Hire (Circular 30). U.S. Copyright Office. Read 2026-10-17.
3. Registrants' Benefits and Responsibilities. ICANN. Read 2026-10-17.