23 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
Who actually owns your domain, and why it matters
A surprising number of Irish businesses do not own their own domain name. They paid for a website years ago, the person who built it registered everything, and nobody has thought about it since. It costs nothing until the day it costs everything.
Why it is the worst thing to lose
Your domain is your email address, your website, your Google profile link and every printed van, card and sign you have ever paid for. Losing it is not a website problem, it is a business continuity problem.
Websites can be rebuilt in a fortnight. A domain somebody else controls can take months to recover, or may not be recoverable at all.
How to check
Look up your domain on a WHOIS service. For a .ie domain, the registry publishes the registrant. If the name shown is your web designer, an agency or a company you do not recognise, you have a problem worth fixing now rather than later.
Also check who receives the renewal emails. If they do not come to you, you will not know when it expires.
- Look up the WHOIS record for your domain
- Check the registrant name is your business
- Confirm renewal notices come to an address you control
- Check your hosting account is in your name
- Make sure at least two people in the business can access both
- Note the renewal date somewhere that is not one person's inbox
How to fix it without a fight
Ask politely and in writing for the domain to be transferred to an account in your name. Most designers will do this without argument; it is a normal request.
If there is resistance, that tells you what you need to know about the relationship and you should resolve it before you need something urgently.
Expiry is the common disaster
Domains lapse because the renewal notice went to somebody who left the company, or to a designer who has stopped trading. The site and the email stop on the same morning with no warning.
Set the renewal to auto-renew on a card that will not expire, and make sure more than one person can see the account.
While you are in there
Check the same for your Google Business Profile, your social accounts and your email. The pattern is identical: one person set them up, nobody else has access, and that person may not always be reachable.
An afternoon spent documenting who owns what is the cheapest insurance in the business.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.