It happens more often than you would think. The person who built your website stops answering calls. Their email bounces. Nobody in the business knows where the site lives or how to log in. Meanwhile the opening hours are wrong and you cannot change them.
The good news is that you can usually get control back. It takes some patience and a bit of paperwork, but none of it is complicated. Work through the steps below in order.
Step 1: Stay calm and write down what you know
Before you contact anyone, gather what you already have. Look through old emails, invoices and bank statements for anything mentioning your website. You are looking for:
- The name of the designer or their company
- Any company names on invoices, such as a hosting firm or a domain company
- Any usernames, passwords or "welcome" emails you were sent
- The email address you used when the site was set up
Even a single invoice can tell you who your hosting company is. Keep everything in one folder.
Step 2: Find out who owns your domain
Your domain is your web address, such as yourbusiness.co.uk. It is the most important thing to get back, because it controls both your website and usually your email.
Use a free WHOIS lookup tool. WHOIS is a public record of who registered a domain and which company they registered it with. That company is called the registrar. For .uk addresses, the registry is run by Nominet, and their own lookup will show you the registrar and the renewal date.
Check three things:
- Who the registrant is. This should be you or your business. If it is the designer, you will need to prove the domain is yours.
- Which registrar it is with. This is the company you will deal with.
- When it expires. If it is close, act quickly. A domain that lapses can be lost.
Step 3: Find out who hosts the site
Hosting is the computer where your website files actually live. The registrar is not always the host. Free online "who is hosting this website" tools can usually tell you the hosting company from your web address. Your old invoices may confirm it.
Step 4: Recover the accounts
Now contact the registrar and the host directly. Explain that your designer is unreachable and you are the business owner. They deal with this regularly.
Be ready to prove who you are. They may ask for:
- Photo ID
- Proof of your business, such as a utility bill or Companies House details
- Proof you paid for the domain or site
If the account is in your name, recovery is usually straightforward: they reset the password or update the email address. If the account is in the designer's name, it is harder, but registrars and Nominet have dispute and transfer processes for exactly this situation. Ask the registrar what they need from you.
Once you are in, change every password and make sure the account email is one you control, not the designer's.
Step 5: Get control of your email
If your business email uses your domain, such as hello@yourbusiness.co.uk, find out where it is run. It might be with the host, or a separate service such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Get admin access to that account too. Losing email is often more painful than losing the website, because customers and suppliers rely on it.
Step 6: Back up everything you can
As soon as you have any access, take a copy. Download the website files and database from the hosting control panel if you can. If you cannot get in at all, save copies of each page from your browser and download your photos. Write down your page addresses, as you will want these later.
This protects you if the hosting is cancelled or the site breaks while you are sorting things out.
Step 7: Decide whether to rescue or rebuild
Once you have control, look honestly at what you have. Rescuing the old site makes sense if:
- You can log in to it
- It is reasonably up to date and works well on a phone
- You are happy with how it looks
Rebuilding is often simpler if:
- Nobody can get into the site itself
- It runs on old software that has not been updated in years
- It is slow, looks dated or does not work well on mobile
If you rebuild, keep your old page addresses and set up redirects. A redirect sends anyone visiting an old address to the matching new page. This helps keep any Google rankings you have built up.
At We are Graft, this is one of the situations we help with: if your old site has vanished or nobody knows the login, we can rebuild it and redirect the old pages so your rankings carry across. You can see how that works on our process page.
How to stop it happening again
Once you are back in control, make a simple record:
- Your domain is registered in your own name, with your own email
- You know who the registrar and host are
- You have the logins stored somewhere safe
- You know when the domain renews
Whoever looks after your site in future, the domain, site and content should belong to you. If anyone tells you otherwise, ask questions. Our FAQ explains how ownership works with We are Graft.
Need a hand?
If you are stuck at any step, or you would rather someone just sorted it, get in touch. Send us what you have found and we will tell you honestly whether to rescue or rebuild. You can also message us on WhatsApp on 07459415807, and we reply within one working day.