Bring your site over in minutes. Your copy and structure come with it.

Who actually owns my website?

Three parties at once, usually. Your domain name belongs to whoever is listed as its holder in the registry, not automatically to whoever pays the invoice. Your copy and photos are yours if you made or paid for them. The design and code belong to whoever made them, unless the copyright was transferred in writing. Three owners in one website, which is why "my website" means less in law than in conversation.

Who holds my domain, and how do I check?

Run a WHOIS lookup. For .nl that lookup lives at SIDN, the registry behind every .nl name; for .com, .net and .org use your registrar's lookup or ICANN's. Since GDPR, personal details of private holders are hidden, but the part you need is still public: which registrar manages the domain, and when it expires.

Then one question decides everything: is the domain in your company's name, or your builder's? Registering on your behalf is not the same as registering in your name. Plenty of agencies keep client domains in their own reseller account and list themselves as holder, which makes you not the holder but a customer of one.

If you are the holder, you only need to prove your identity to the registrar to get back into the account. If your builder is the holder, the registration has to change hands and they must approve that. For .nl, ask SIDN what applies. For .com and other gTLDs, ICANN's Transfer Policy applies, including a 60-day lock on transfers after a new registration or a change of registrant. Budget for those 60 days.

What can I take with me?

More than you expect, less than you hope. What you made or paid for is yours; anything under a licence stays with the licence holder. Below, what each one takes.

What stays behind with my old builder?

Three categories. An agency-built CMS: that software is their product and you had a right to use it. Paid themes and plugins: the licence sits on their account and usually cannot move. And a bespoke design whose copyright was never transferred: the Dutch Copyright Act requires a written deed for that, and most jurisdictions default the same way.

My web builder isn't responding. What now?

Stop going through them. Nearly everything you need sits with parties you can deal with directly: your domain's registrar, your host, and Google. Start with the WHOIS lookup: it tells you which registrar manages your domain, and that company, not your builder, can hand your access back.

• Call the registrar, not the builder. Ask whose name the domain is in and what the procedure is for a holder change or a transfer token. They may tell you whether you are the holder.
• Put your request in writing, on one page, with a deadline: registrar access or a transfer token, administrator access, an export of your content, your form submissions.
• For personal data, your form submissions for instance, GDPR gives you a right of access and a right to have that data ported. That right does not cover your design or your code.
• Is your domain about to expire? That is your only hard deadline: an expired domain drops out of quarantine and can be registered by someone else.
• If it stays quiet, escalating to the registry or taking legal advice is next. Meanwhile, claim your Google Business Profile: separate from your website, and nearly always recoverable.

How do I avoid this next time?

Register the domain yourself, in your company's name, in an account you own, and keep the credentials in your own password manager. Create Google Analytics and Search Console with your own Google account and grant your builder access, not the reverse. At handover, get two lines on paper: who holds the domain, and what you may do with the design.

Will I keep my Google rankings?

If you keep the same domain and redirect your URLs properly, largely yes. What does cost you rankings is throwing content away: if a page that ranked disappears, its position goes with it. So before you switch, list which pages actually bring in traffic: Search Console shows that for free.

Where FWRD fits

At FWRD a switch starts with the address of your current site. The agent fetches that page and turns it into a content report: what you offer, the prices on the page, your address, opening hours and contact details, your reviews quoted word for word, and the lines that carry your brand. You confirm that report; from there it is the starting point for the new site, instead of a blank canvas.

Legal pages go separately: privacy statements, terms and cookie policies are never summarised but carried over verbatim, because a paraphrased privacy statement is legally a different document. Want more pages brought across? Give the agent those addresses too.

Your domain stays where it is: you connect it by adding one DNS record at your own registrar, and FWRD issues the SSL certificate. You keep the keys. A custom domain and Google indexing come with Grow (€29/mo billed annually); on the free plan your site stays noindex, on a fwrd.digital address. If a page disappears later, FWRD leaves a 301 instead of a 404.

Honest about the limits: we cannot retrieve your domain from an uncooperative builder; only the holder and the registrar can. And we do not build webshops; if you sell online, we refer you on.