Everything we make for you is yours
Designs, source code, documentation, and the accounts underneath them. You should be able to walk away with all of it and have another team pick it up without calling us first.
Why a page about this exists
Plenty of people arrive at us after an agency disappeared with the domain, or with a website nobody can edit because the only login belonged to a contractor who stopped answering.
We would rather you stay because the work is good. Holding your accounts hostage is a poor substitute for that, and it makes us worse at our job.
So here is the full list of what arrives, in plain terms, before you sign anything.
What you receive
Not every engagement produces all of these. A page build does not need a brand guide, and an audit does not ship code. What you get is listed in your scope before the work starts.
Source code, in your repository
Everything we write lands in a repository you own, with readable commit history rather than one drop at the end. If your organization does not have somewhere to put it, we will set that up in your name.
Design files and brand assets
Working files, exported assets, and, on brand engagements, logo files in the formats you will actually need plus your color and type definitions.
Short references people read
Written guides for the handful of tasks your team does weekly, plus technical notes on how the parts fit together for whoever comes next.
Findings, statement, and VPAT
On accessibility work you get the violations found, why each one blocks a real person, and how to fix it, plus an accessibility statement and a VPAT you can publish or send to a buyer.
Tracking and reporting you can read
Analytics configured around questions you asked, conversion events marked, and a dashboard or recurring report that says what changed and what it probably means.
What stays yours the whole time
These are registered in your name from day one, not transferred at the end. We take the access we need to do the work and nothing beyond it.
Your domain
Registered to your organization, in an account you control. If it is currently sitting with a former vendor, moving it back is usually one of the first things we do.
Your hosting and platform accounts
Billed to you, owned by you. We work inside them as a collaborator, which also means you can see exactly what you are paying for.
Your code repository
Under your organization's account. Another developer can be added and productive without anything having to be exported or handed over.
Your analytics and tag containers
Your property, your historical data. Analytics history is not something you should ever lose because you changed agencies.
Your content and your CMS logins
Editing access for your team from the moment the site is usable, not once the project closes.
The work itself
Designs, code, and documentation produced for you belong to you once the engagement is paid. There is no license you have to keep renewing to use your own website.
Questions about how we work
- Do we own the code and the designs you produce?
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Yes. Everything we produce for you is yours once the engagement is paid: source code, design files, documentation, and any research or reports along the way. There is no license to renew in order to keep using your own website.
Code goes into a repository owned by your organization from the start, so another developer can be added and be productive without a handover.
- What happens to our accounts and access if we stop working together?
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Nothing. Your domain, hosting, platform accounts, analytics property, and repository are in your name the whole time, so there is nothing for us to hand back. We remove our own access on request and answer questions from whoever picks it up next.
We would rather you stayed because the work is good than because leaving is painful.
- Do you provide an accessibility statement or a VPAT?
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Yes, on accessibility engagements. An audit gives you the violations found, why each one blocks a real person, and how to fix it, plus an accessibility statement you can publish and a VPAT you can send to a buyer or a funder who asks for one.
We also produce both at launch on new builds, meaning a custom web application or a site we designed from scratch in house. On work that builds on a site somebody else made, a VPAT is an audit deliverable rather than something we can hand over at launch, because it has to describe the whole product and not just the part we touched. Say so during scoping if a procurement process needs one.
- Can my team update the site after launch?
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Yes. We build on a CMS your team can manage, and structure the design so new pages can reuse what already exists.
- Do you train our staff, or hand over the keys and leave?
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We train. Handoff includes sessions on the handful of workflows staff need on day one, a short written reference for those, and someone reachable through the first weeks of live use. The goal is self-sufficiency on the routine things, with deeper expertise arriving over time.
- Can the report be shared with another vendor?
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Yes. The report is yours.
Want the list written against your project?
Tell us what you are trying to build and we will tell you exactly what would arrive at the end of it, before you commit to anything.
If you are currently locked out of your own domain or hosting, say so on the call. We have untangled that more than once.