Agencies shut down more often than anyone advertises, and some simply stop answering email. When that happens, the question of who legally holds each piece of your online operation stops being fine print and becomes the whole problem. The time to settle it is before any work begins — itemized, in writing.
The domain is the deed
Everything else points at your domain name — the website, the email address on your invoices, the link on your truck wrap, the QR code taped to the counter. It should live in a registrar account opened in your name, under your email address, with renewal billing on your card. The common trap is convenience: an agency registers the domain inside its own account "to keep things simple," and it sits there for years. If that agency later disappears or turns hostile, transferring the domain out requires cooperation you may not be able to get, and the recovery process is slow at best. The test takes two minutes and costs nothing: log into your registrar today. If you cannot name your registrar, that is the finding.
Phone numbers are easier to lose than domains
Missed-call and texting systems work by placing a programmable number in front of your published line. Whoever's platform account holds that number controls it. If it sits in a vendor's account, the number your customers now text belongs, in every practical sense, to the vendor — and if the relationship ends badly, so does the thread of every conversation attached to it. A number in your own account carries port-out rights; a number in someone else's account carries a negotiation. The same logic covers text registration. US carriers require business texting to be registered under a legal business identity and tax ID, and that registration should name your business — not sit as a sub-entry inside a vendor's umbrella account — because the registration's history follows the identity, and rebuilding one means going back through the carriers' review queue while your texting stays dark.
A copy of the code, not a license to it
The contract language that matters is assignment on payment: once the invoice is settled, the work is your property. Property you cannot hold is theoretical, so "yours" has to mean a copy in your possession — access to the code repository, or a complete export delivered to storage you control — not an assurance that it exists somewhere safe. One caveat belongs in the open before a platform is chosen rather than after: work built inside a proprietary site builder cannot be handed over as portable code, because it only runs inside that platform. That is not a scandal. It is a cost of leaving, and it should be priced into the decision on day one, out loud.
Documents in, index out
For AI systems grounded in your paperwork, the source documents were always yours; nothing changes there. The processed form is the part contracts forget. Your documents get broken into passages and indexed by meaning, and that index is derived from your material — the agreement should treat it as yours too, deliverable on request or reproducible from written, handed-over steps. When the system runs on-premise, on hardware in your building, most of this settles itself, because there is nothing to retrieve from anyone. One honest note about the middle of the stack: the AI model itself is nobody's property at this table. Open-weight models are used under a license. What you own is everything built around the model — the configuration, the prompts, the pipeline, and the indexed data.
The records the system writes
Call logs, message threads, transcripts, lead records. These are business records, and in some trades retaining them is not a preference but an obligation with a schedule attached — one you cannot meet if your own records sit behind someone else's login. Whatever platform holds them, you should be able to export the whole set in a plain format a bookkeeper can open, without a fee and without a favor. Ask the export question before signing anything: "How do I get all of my data out, today, by myself?" If the answer involves a support ticket, you have learned the important thing early, which is the cheapest time to learn it.
What ownership does not include
Owning every asset is not the same as being able to operate any of it. A code repository you hold but cannot deploy is an heirloom. A ported number still needs a carrier account; hosting still needs a bill paid on time; an index still needs a pipeline someone can run. Ownership therefore needs a companion: documentation written for a competent stranger, and accounts structured so that you are the holder and the vendor is invited staff — never the reverse. There are also things no contract can hand you, because nobody at the table owns them: the model weights, the carriers' networks, the registrar itself. A vendor promising ownership of those is selling scenery.
Where to start
Before the next contract — with us or with anyone — ask for a single page, itemized in writing: who holds the registrar account, who owns each phone number and on what port-out terms, what form the code arrives in, what format the data exports to, and what changes hands on the last day of the relationship. Then run the two-minute test: log into your registrar today. If that login does not exist or is not yours, making it yours is the first project, and it costs nothing but an afternoon.