If you’re dealing with a web designer not responding to calls or emails, and you can’t log in to your own website, start by finding out who holds each key: your domain name, your hosting and the account the site was built in. Then ask for each one by name, in writing, with a date. If the domain is in your name, you can always get a website live again, whatever the designer does.
When I researched this post, the same story kept turning up on UK Business Forums, MoneySavingExpert and Mumsnet, in threads going back to 2013. A one person designer goes quiet, and only then does the owner find out that someone else holds every login. It feels hopeless, but it’s usually fixable.
Web designer not responding? What to do in the first hour
Your website almost certainly hasn’t disappeared, and nothing needs deciding today. Don’t pay anyone a “release fee”, don’t buy a new domain in a panic, and don’t send a furious message you’ll regret. Instead:
- Save what’s live now. Screenshot every page and copy the words into a document.
- Gather the paper trail. Invoices, emails and WhatsApp messages show what you paid for and what was promised.
- Write down every login you have, even old ones.
Who owns my domain name? Check that first
Your domain is your address online, and it usually carries your email too. Whoever controls it decides where your website and mail go, so it matters more than the site itself.
For a .uk or .co.uk address, Nominet runs the register. Its free lookup shows the company the domain is registered through, called the registrar, plus its renewal date and name servers. It only shows the holder’s name and address if they’ve agreed to that. For a .com, ICANN’s free lookup at lookup.icann.org does the same job.
Then contact the registrar, ask whose name the domain is in, and expect to prove who you are.
Our own domain, elevantae.com, is registered at GoDaddy, but its DNS, the settings that say where the website and email live, runs on Cloudflare. Two companies for one address is completely normal.
How do I tell who hosts my website?
Hosting is the computer your website lives on, often run by a different company from the registrar. The quickest clue is the name servers in that same lookup. If they read something like ns1 followed by a hosting company’s name, that’s usually where your DNS sits, and often your site too. A developer can confirm it in a few minutes.
Can I change who hosts my website without the old designer?
If the domain is in your name and you can log in at the registrar, yes. What you can’t take are the website files, if they sit in the designer’s own hosting account and you have no login.
Control the domain and you can always get a site live again. Control the hosting as well and you keep the site you’ve already got.
What to ask the designer for, in writing
Keep it short, polite and by email, so there’s a dated record. People go quiet for all sorts of reasons, and a calm message gets answered more often than an angry one. Ask for each thing by name:
- The domain moved into your name, or what you need to move it: a transfer code (sometimes called an auth code) for a .com, or a change of registrar tag for a .uk.
- The hosting login, or a full backup of the site’s files and database.
- An administrator login to the website.
- Ownership of your Google Business Profile, Search Console, Google Analytics and any Google Ads account.
Give a clear date, I’d say 14 days, and say you’ll look at other options if you hear nothing. Keep a copy of everything, in case it ever becomes a dispute.
If it feels like your web designer is holding your website hostage
Check exactly whose name the domain is in. If it’s yours and the designer just holds the login, go to the registrar yourself and prove who you are. For a .com, ICANN’s rules at the time of writing say the registrar must give you the transfer code within five calendar days of asking.
If it’s genuinely in the designer’s name, ask them to transfer it. For a .uk, the current holder starts that through Nominet and you accept it.
If they won’t, Nominet runs a Dispute Resolution Service. They get 15 working days to respond, and if they do, Nominet offers free mediation. If that fails, or they never reply, you can pay for an independent expert to decide.
A .com has its own dispute process under ICANN’s rules. I’m not a solicitor, so speak to one before you spend money on any of this.
Locked out of a Wix or WordPress site
If you’re locked out of your website, what you can do depends on what it was built with.
A Wix site can be moved to another Wix account from the dashboard of the account that owns it, along with a domain and mailboxes bought through Wix. But Wix’s own help says a site can’t move to outside hosting, because it only runs on Wix. If the designer owns the account and won’t transfer it, you’d be rebuilding from the words and photos you saved.
WordPress is files and a database on a server, so whoever has the hosting login can give you a full backup, and almost any developer can set it up elsewhere. Without that login, you’re back to asking the designer or the host, and a host may only talk to the account holder.
“But I paid for it”: who owns the design?
Under UK copyright rules, if you commission someone outside your business, they’re the first owner of the copyright in what they make, unless you agreed otherwise in writing. GOV.UK says a court may decide you have a licence to use it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you own it. Words and photos you supplied are still yours. There’s more in who owns your website when a designer builds it.
If you paid a deposit for a site that never arrived, ask for it back in writing with a final date. GOV.UK has a service for claiming money owed, and it suggests mediation, which can be quicker and cheaper than court. Speak to a solicitor, or Citizens Advice if you’re not sure where to start.
The accounts people forget
Email, Google Business Profile, Search Console and Google Ads are the ones that bite later.
When we set up Google Ads for our first client, a café in Wolverhampton that opened in October 2026, the first Google login they handed over couldn’t see their Business Profile. The profile already existed and was verified, but under a different Google account the café also used, which someone had set up earlier. The café has no website yet, so its adverts point at that profile, and getting into the right account mattered. The address on the profile didn’t quite match the sign either, with a letter missing from the street number.
If the account that owns your profile belongs to someone you can’t reach, Google lets you ask the current owner for access, and they get 3 days to reply. That’s slow when you’re trying to open.
In Search Console, Google’s free tool for seeing how your site appears in search, removing an owner doesn’t delete their verification. If they verified with a DNS record, that record has to go too.
Email depends on whoever controls your DNS. When we set up our own Microsoft 365, adding the records wasn’t the end of it: we still had to switch on DKIM, a signature that helps mail stay out of spam folders, in Microsoft’s Defender portal. You can’t do that if the only person with DNS access has gone quiet.
When starting again is quicker than getting it back
My view, and it’s only a view: if you control the domain, rebuilding is often quicker than winning back a site you can’t log into. If you’ve lost the domain, sort that first, because everything hangs off it.
Picture two businesses. A hairdresser has a five page Wix site in the designer’s own account, untouched since it went up. A physio’s WordPress site brings in bookings from Google every week.
I’d tell the hairdresser to start again, since weeks of chasing can cost more than a new site. I’d tell the physio to push hard for that backup.
Nobody can promise rankings either way, but redirecting each old page address to its new one gives what you’ve earned the best chance of coming with you. More on that in whether a new website will lose your Google rankings.
A setup you win back isn’t automatically a good one, either. When I audited my own Detailing Sanctuary Google Ads account, the goal it was bidding towards came from a tag that had never fired once.
If your site has gone dark and you need something now, a single landing page is £150 and usually live the next working day.
How to make sure this never happens again
A lot of these stories involve a one person outfit that went quiet, and we’re only two people ourselves. Honestly, you shouldn’t have to trust any supplier that much. Whoever you use, ask for:
- the domain in your name, with your own email address on it
- a hosting account in your name
- at least two admins on everything
- ownership of the design, content and code, in writing.
Keep the logins in a password manager and the renewal dates in your calendar.
With us, you own the design, content, code and domain outright at handover, or once the last monthly payment goes out, and it’s written down. The domain is in your name, and hosting sits on a Cloudflare account set up in your name, not ours. One catch: our sites have no drag and drop editor, so changes come through a care plan or at £60 an hour in 15 minute steps, always quoted first. The code is yours, though, so another developer can work on it whenever you choose.
Questions people ask about getting a website back
Can a web designer legally keep my domain name?
Being the holder on paper doesn’t always settle who has the better right to it. In one published case, Nominet’s dispute service handed a domain back to a company whose web developer had registered it in the developer’s own name and then stopped responding. Speak to a solicitor before you spend money on a dispute.
Will I lose my business email if I move my domain?
Not if the email records come across with it. Before anyone changes the registrar or name servers, get a copy of every DNS record. If your mailboxes were bought through the designer, find out where they live, because they’re a separate thing to move.
Do I own my website if I paid a designer to build it?
Not automatically. Unless you agreed otherwise in writing, the person who made it owns the copyright, though a court may decide you have a licence to use it.
How long does it take to get a domain transferred into my name?
For a .com, at the time of writing, the registrar must give you the transfer code within five calendar days of asking. Changing the name or email on a .com can then lock it against moving registrar for 60 days, though some registrars let you opt out. A Nominet dispute takes longer, because the other side has 15 working days just to respond.
If you’re stuck right now
Send us what you’ve found: the lookup result, the invoices and whatever logins you still have. We’ll tell you honestly whether the old site is worth getting back or whether starting again is quicker, and if you can sort it yourself with this page, I’ll say so.
A rebuild starts with a free concept of your new site. Our website redesign page shows how the rest works, and every price is on our pricing page.