Problem · Owners
Our website is old, slow, and the agency that built it holds the keys.
Every edit is a ticket. The hosting invoice comes from the agency. Nobody on your team has the login, and when you asked for the files, the answer was vague. Meanwhile the site takes four seconds to load on a phone and half your ad budget lands on it. This is a solvable problem, and the first step is legal, not technical.
How people search thisagency owns my website · how to get my website files from web designer · web design company holding website hostage · old website slow need rebuild cost · who owns the website code agency or client
A full rebuild on our stack, Next.js, server rendered, schema on every page, is included with a 12 month term on any tier, or $15,000 up front month to month. The repository, the domain, and the hosting accounts are yours from day one. Pricing is published.
Get the two things you actually need
The domain and the content. If the domain is registered in your name, you can point it anywhere in an afternoon, and no vendor can stop you. Check the WHOIS record today. If it is registered to the agency, request a transfer in writing; most will comply, and a lawyer's letter resolves the rest. The content is yours by contract in most agreements and by common sense in all of them; export every page's text and images now, before the relationship gets worse.
You do not need the old code. A six year old WordPress build with eleven plugins is not an asset. It is the reason the site is slow.
What the old site is costing you
Mobile load times over three seconds lose a measurable share of visitors before the page appears, and Google reads Core Web Vitals on mobile. Client side rendering hides your text from crawlers and AI engines. A form builder plugin with no business associate agreement is a HIPAA exposure if you are a practice. And every ad click that lands on a page converting under 1 percent is a click you paid full price for and got nothing from.
What a rebuild that you own looks like
Next.js on Vercel, server rendered so every word is in the HTML, TypeScript so the content is typed data rather than a page builder, schema on every route through one set of builders, and Supabase where data is needed. A commercial site of 15 to 40 pages ships in 6 to 10 weeks inside the 90 day ramp, content included. Request any page without JavaScript and read the copy; that is the test most agency sites fail. Repo, content, and infrastructure accounts are yours. If you leave, you take the site with you.
Questions on this problem
We migrate from it. New builds ship on our stack because performance, schema control, and server rendering are the point, and because you should not need a vendor to change a sentence.
Domains are registrar level property. If it is in your name, transfer it. If it is not, a written demand and, rarely, a lawyer's letter resolve it. We have walked clients through both.
On a term, hosting and bandwidth are included. Month to month, hosting is on our stack at cost. Either way the accounts are in your name.
George Stoff, Founder and Lead Engineer
Thirty years building software, brands, and demand. On every account.