Who actually owns your domain name?

Why the domain is the part that matters

A website is three things you can lose separately: the domain, the hosting and the files. A new host can have you running inside a day. Files can usually be recovered from your live pages, or the Internet Archive if the site is dark.

The domain has no substitute. Your signage, van, business cards, Google listing, email addresses and every link anyone ever sent a friend all point at it. Losing it means a change of business name, forced on you by someone else, on their timing.

The five-minute check, step by step

Tab one: the public record. Open any free WHOIS lookup and type in your domain. For .ca you can also use the lookup at cira.ca, run by CIRA, which operates the .ca registry. Read four lines:

• Registrant: the legal owner. It should be your business name or your name.
• Registrar: the company where the account lives.
• Registrant email: the person asked to approve a transfer. It should be an address you can open.
• Expiry date: put it in your calendar with a reminder a month early. Lapsed credit cards lose far more domains than bad intentions do.

Tab two: the account. At the registrar named in the record, click "forgot password" and enter your own email. If the reset arrives, you control the account. If not, someone else does, whatever the record says.

Write the answers down somewhere other than your laptop. It is the check that opens the rescue guide for a vanished web designer, done calmly, before anything has gone wrong.

What the .ca rules mean for a Canadian business

First, .ca is not open to everyone: registrants must meet Canadian presence requirements, which a Canadian-incorporated business or a resident owner meets without effort. One more reason to hold it in the business’s own name rather than the contractor’s.

Second, the .ca record publishes business and organisation registrants but masks individuals for privacy. A blank-looking record can simply mean the domain is registered to a person, so you may need to ask the registrar directly, with proof the domain represents your business.

If the holder of your domain will not respond, CIRA runs a formal dispute process for .ca. It is slow and costs money, so get the registration right at the start.

What "registered in your name" actually means

All four of these, at once:

• The registrant field carries your business’s legal name, not your designer’s, their agency’s, or "Web Services Inc".
• The registrant email is an address you can open today, because transfer approvals go there.
• The registrar login is yours. Others may be given access to help; nobody else should be the only one with it.
• The card on file is yours, so a renewal never depends on someone else paying a bill for you.

Somebody else managing your domain is normal. Somebody else owning it is not, and these four lines are the difference.

Red flags in how a vendor talks about your domain

None of these prove bad intent. Each one means: ask one more question, in writing, before you pay.

• "Don’t worry, we handle all that." Handling is fine. Ask who the registrant is, and get the answer by email.
• The domain is bundled into a monthly fee with no line item. Then you cannot tell whether you would keep it after cancelling.
• The registrant email is on the vendor’s domain. Whoever receives transfer approvals is effectively the owner.
• You have never received a renewal notice. Then the notices are going to somebody else.
• "You can have it when the contract ends." Ownership is not a reward for good behaviour. It is yours now or it is leverage.
• Transfer is quoted as a fee. That is a charge for giving back something already yours.

The same instincts apply to the site itself: who owns your website files covers what a real handover contains and how to ask for one.

How Droom does it, so you can hold us to it

A checkable practice, not a promise: on every Droom build the domain is registered in your name, in a registrar account you control, with your email as the registrant address and your card on the renewal. Run the WHOIS check above on your own site the day it launches.

The pricing page puts it in writing: cancel and you keep the site, the domain and the files, and a move to another host is handed over at no charge. The website service confirms where your domain lives before anything is designed.

If your check came back wrong, ask plainly. Most vendors transfer a domain within a week.