Ownership
If your website disappears tomorrow, what do you actually own?
A website is not one thing. It is a chain of accounts, services, files, permissions, and people. If the chain is not documented, ownership can disappear the moment a vendor relationship changes.
Start with the name on the door
Your domain is the address customers know. The registrant account should belong to the business, use a business-controlled email address, and have current recovery information and multi-factor authentication.
A vendor can administer the domain. A vendor should not quietly own it. Record the registrar, renewal date, registrant, nameservers, and the people authorized to make changes.
Separate the website from the services around it
Hosting, DNS, email delivery, analytics, form delivery, security, backups, plugin licenses, and advertising accounts may all come from different providers. A website can look healthy while one forgotten account is about to expire.
Build a one-page ownership register. For each service, record what it does, who owns the account, who pays for it, who can access it, and what breaks if it stops.
Know what can be exported
Ownership is more than having a login. You should know whether the site, database, media, design assets, analytics history, and customer information can be exported in a useful form.
Ask for a recovery test, not just a backup checkbox. A backup that has never been restored is a hopeful file, not a recovery plan.
Make ownership routine
Review the register at least twice a year and whenever an employee or vendor relationship changes. Remove stale access, confirm recovery methods, test critical backups, and document any new dependency.
The goal is not to remove trusted partners. It is to make sure the business can keep operating if any one person or provider becomes unavailable.