A contractor posted this a couple weeks ago, asking about his marketing agency:
"I feel like I'm held hostage because I don't have access to everything. But maybe that is the norm."
The top reply was four words. "Own your own stuff. Always."
Both of those guys are right, and neither of them told him how to find out where he stands. So here's the list.
Six things. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty if you have to dig through old email. You can do the whole thing tonight from your couch, and at the end you'll know something you probably don't know right now, which is whether you could leave tomorrow if you wanted to.
1. Who is the domain registered to
Your domain is the address. Everything else is furniture. If somebody else holds the address, nothing else on this list matters much.
Go to a WHOIS lookup, type in your domain, and see what comes back. A lot of registrations are behind privacy protection now, which hides the name, so that alone might not answer it. The better test is the practical one: can you log into the registrar right now? GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, wherever it lives. Do you have that login, or does somebody else?
This one takes ninety seconds and it's the one that matters most, which is exactly why nobody checks it.
2. Are you the Primary Owner of your Google Business Profile
Not a manager. Owner. There's a difference and it's the difference.
Open your Business Profile, go into the settings for people and access, and look at what it says next to your name. Manager means you can post and reply to reviews. Primary Owner means you can remove everybody else.
If your marketing company is the Primary Owner and you're a manager, they hold the single most valuable thing in your local marketing. Not the website. The profile. That's where the calls come from.
3. Whose email is the Google Ads account under
If you're running ads, log in and check who the account is under. Your email or theirs.
This one has a second layer worth knowing about. Even if the ads themselves are simple to rebuild, the account history isn't. Google's system learns which clicks turn into calls for you over months. Start a fresh account and that learning goes back to zero on day one. You're not just moving the ads. You're moving the head start.
4. Whose Business Portfolio holds your Facebook page
Same question, different building. In Meta Business Suite, check whether your page sits inside your own Business Portfolio or somebody else's.
This is the one that catches the most people, because the page feels like yours. You post on it. Your name's on it. But if it lives in an agency's portfolio, the agency decides who gets in.
5. Where do the site files actually live
Two questions here. Who's the hosting account in the name of, and can you get a copy of the site?
If the answer to the second one is "I have no idea," that's normal and it's fixable. Ask. A straight answer sounds like "here's a zip file" or "here's your cPanel login." A weird answer sounds like a paragraph about proprietary platforms.
Worth knowing: if the site was built on somebody's own platform or template system, there may genuinely be no file to hand you. That's not always somebody being shady, it's just how that product works. But you should find that out now, on a normal Tuesday, and not on the day you're trying to leave.
6. Where do form submissions go
Fill out your own contact form. Right now, from your phone.
Then go find where it landed. Is it an inbox you actually open? Is it an inbox at all, or is it sitting in a dashboard somewhere that you'd lose access to the day you cancel?
Your leads are your customer list. If the only copy lives in somebody else's system, that list isn't yours, it's theirs. And this one's worth doing twice a year regardless of who built your site, because forms break quietly and nobody sends you a notice about a lead you didn't get.
If something comes back wrong, don't set anything on fire
Here's the part most versions of this post skip.
Most of the time the answer isn't malice. It's sloppiness. Somebody set up your GBP with their own Gmail four years ago because it was faster, and they've never thought about it since. That guy will fix it in ten minutes if you ask him nicely.
So ask nicely first. "Hey, I'm getting my accounts organized. Can you make me the owner on the Google profile and send me the registrar login?" That's it. No lawyer voice, no accusation. You're not starting a fight, you're doing bookkeeping.
Most people say yes. A few say yes but drag it out, which usually means they're disorganized. And if somebody flat out says no, well, now you know something you didn't know an hour ago. That's worth the twenty minutes by itself.
The part that costs me money to write
If you run this list and everything comes back in your name, you don't need me. Nothing's wrong. Close the tab.
I'd rather you know that than not know it. A guy who finds out he's fine is a guy who stops feeling stuck, and honestly the number of contractors staying with somebody who quit trying on them, purely because leaving feels impossible, is depressing.
For what it's worth, here's where I stand on it, and it's published on my pricing page where anybody can hold me to it. Your domain stays yours. Your site files get handed over. You keep full access to your profile, your ads and your lead data. You leave, you take your stuff with you. Nothing's held for ransom, and there's no version of this where I'm the reason you're stuck.
That's not a favor. That should be the floor.
If you want more on why the Google Business Profile is the piece worth protecting hardest, the basics are here.
Ran the list and one of them came back wrong? Send me a message and tell me which one. I'll tell you straight whether it's fixable without moving anything, and if it is, I'm not going to pretend you need to hire me to do it.