What to do when your web designer stops answering
Short answer: before anything else, find out what you actually control — the domain, the hosting, and the files. Everything else depends on that, and it’s far easier to check now than during an outage.
First, no panic — and no blame
People retire, change careers, get sick, or just stop. It usually isn’t malice, and treating it as a fight closes doors you may need open — the friendliest possible “could you send me my logins?” email is still step one. But don’t wait on a reply to do the rest of this.
Find out what you control, in this order
- The domain. Look your domain up on a WHOIS lookup site (search “whois lookup”). Note the registrar and the expiry date. Then ask: do you have a login at that registrar? If the domain is registered to your designer, this is your most urgent item — everything else can be rebuilt; a lost domain takes your email and your Google history with it.
- The email. If your business email runs on the domain, find out where it’s hosted and who holds the admin account. Losing email hurts faster than losing the website.
- The hosting. Where does the site physically live? Any invoice, welcome email, or bank statement naming a hosting company is a lead. If the designer paid for hosting themselves, the site is one missed payment from going dark.
- A full backup. However you get it — an export, a copy from the host, or someone technical pulling the pages — get a copy of the site and its images somewhere you control, today.
- The Google Business Profile. Check whether you’re an owner of the listing or just a manager, or neither.
Then decide, based on what you found
- You control the domain: you’re in good shape. The site can be moved or rebuilt under something you own, with no one’s permission needed.
- You don’t: recovery is the project. Registrars have processes for business owners reclaiming domains, and a polite request to the designer resolves most cases — but start before the renewal date, not after.
What “handled properly” looks like
Whoever you work with next: the domain in your name, every account documented with you as owner, and access handed over in writing. The test of a good arrangement is simple — if that person vanished tomorrow, would you still hold everything? It’s how I set clients up, and it’s worth demanding from anyone.