Quick test. Right now, without emailing anyone, could you log in to the account where your domain name is registered?
Not your website. The domain itself. The thing that makes yourbusiness.com point anywhere at all.
A lot of owners can't. And most of them don't find out until the day their web person stops answering emails.
I see this more than you'd think. Someone hires a designer, the designer registers the domain under their own account, and builds the site. Everything works. Then the designer moves on or vanishes. The domain keeps renewing on their card for a while, so nobody notices.
Then a renewal fails, or you want to move to a new web person, and you learn your business's address on the internet is registered in a stranger's name.
Getting a domain back is possible. Registrars have a process for proving ownership. But you'll be digging up business paperwork and old payment receipts while your site and email sit dead. Weeks of hassle to fix something a five minute check would have caught.
And this might surprise you: I'm not telling you to manage the domain yourself.
Most of my clients don't want to touch any of this, and that's fine. I handle domains and renewals for people who never want to see a registrar dashboard. The difference is the domain is registered in their name, they know who has access, and if I got hit by a bus tomorrow they could hand the keys to someone else.
Owning your domain means your name is on the registration and you have a way in if your web person disappears.
So ask your web person two questions: whose name is the domain registered under, and what happens if you can't reach them?
A good one will answer without flinching.
If the answer is fuzzy, fix it now, while everything still works and everyone is still answering emails.
