Who owns the website when it is finished?

The code and the repository it lives in. The domain name. The hosting account. Any accounts created for the project. All of it in your name, on your card, under your login.

You buy the domain and hosting yourself rather than through me. It is a few dollars a month and it means nobody, including me, can hold your website hostage. If you do not have a domain yet I will tell you exactly what to buy.

A common arrangement in this industry is that the agency owns the domain, the hosting and sometimes the code. It works fine right up until you want to leave, and then leaving means starting over.

The version of this I see most often around Fredericksburg is a site built years ago by someone who is now unreachable, on a hosting account nobody has the login for. The business does not own its own website and does not find out until it needs changing.

Whose name is the domain registered in. Whose name is the hosting account in. Do I get the source code. Can another developer take this over without a rebuild.

If any answer is vague, that is the answer. Ask me the same four and you will get the same reply every time: yours, yours, yes, yes.

You keep everything and any other developer can pick it up. I would rather earn the next project than trap you into it.