This weekend, I spoke with a local artist who’s been helping her boss manage two web applications. What began as a simple venting session about unresponsive developers quickly turned into a cautionary tale that too many small businesses have lived through. They were paying weekly development fees without visible progress, facing new lump-sum completion costs, and, worst of all, realizing that their developer had quietly taken control of their entire digital presence.
The developer had registered the domain names under his own account, hosted the websites on his private server, and controlled all access credentials. When they questioned the arrangement, he threatened additional fees to maintain their sites. In short, he had made himself indispensable and irreplaceable; the classic developer hostage scenario.
Fortunately, the artist had once been given full administrative credentials to make design tweaks. Using that access, we backed up the entire codebase, identified the platform, and exported both applications’ databases. It was a lucky escape. Many business owners aren’t as fortunate.
Below are essential practices to ensure you never find yourself locked out of your own technology—and that you properly budget for doing things the right way.
Table of Contents
Register and Control Your Own Domain Names
Your domain name is your digital property deed. Always register it under your company’s legal name with an email address you control, not your developer’s. While it’s fine to list your developer as a technical contact, never make them the owner or registrant. If your developer insists on managing domains for you, they can still do so through a separate login on your registrar account.
If your developer owns your domain, you don’t own your brand’s online identity. A disagreement could mean losing access to your website, email addresses, and years of SEO authority overnight.
Host Under Your Own Account
Developers often offer hosting as a convenience, but this is a trap disguised as service. You should own the hosting account in your company’s name and add your developer as a user with restricted credentials.
Yes, developers are more efficient when they can control the hosting environment, but that doesn’t mean you surrender ownership. If your relationship ends, you can revoke their access instantly and maintain full control of your data, code, and uptime.
When setting up hosting, ensure your billing credentials, DNS settings, SSL certificates, and backups are in your possession. Ask for written confirmation that you, not the developer, own all assets tied to the site. And don’t treat hosting as an afterthought in your budget. Reliable hosting, security, and backups are foundational costs that protect your business, not optional add-ons.
Maintain Source Code Ownership and Licensing Rights
Never assume you automatically own the code your developer writes for you. Contracts should explicitly state that intellectual property (IP) rights transfer to your business upon payment. Otherwise, your developer could reuse your proprietary logic or refuse to hand over the source code.
Clarify whether you’re buying a custom build where you own all rights, or a licensed use of pre-existing frameworks or modules your developer owns; these options might lower costs but limit portability.
If the latter, you’ll want the right to use, modify, and host the code independently, even if the developer retains some core IP. Proper legal and IP documentation should be included in your project budget, since drafting it after the fact is far more expensive.
Require a Shared Repository
All development should occur in a version-controlled repository such as GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, with your company as the owner of the repository. Developers can be added as collaborators.
This ensures that your source code, history, and commit logs are always available. It also prevents scenarios where a developer disappears, takes the latest version with them, or erases prior work. You can track changes, review progress, and hand off the project seamlessly to another developer if needed.
Budget for repository management, access control, and occasional audits. A version-controlled workflow isn’t “nice to have”—it’s essential infrastructure for any custom development project.
Insist on Regular Technology Audits and Documentation
Every project should include periodic technology audits to verify what frameworks, libraries, and plugins are being used, whether any third-party licenses or APIs are tied to paid or expiring subscriptions, and credentials and configuration files are stored securely and accessible to you.
Documentation should include a complete architectural overview, a list of dependencies and environments, deployment instructions and version numbers, and administrator credentials and API keys.
Without documentation, you’re dependent on the developer’s memory—another form of hostage-taking. Documentation takes time and effort, so make sure your development contract allocates hours or line items for it. Skipping this step to save money is one of the most expensive mistakes a company can make later.
Verify Third-Party Licenses and Tools
Modern applications rely on external libraries, templates, and APIs. You must confirm that licenses are valid and registered to your company, that you’re not violating usage terms that could trigger lawsuits or service interruptions, and that renewals and billing for third-party tools are under your control.
If your developer pays for a license tied to their own account, they can revoke your access at any time or let it lapse, which could break your application. Keeping these licenses properly managed and documented is an ongoing administrative cost—one that should be part of your operating budget.
Keep an Independent Backup
Always have a complete backup strategy that includes both your codebase and your database. Relying on your developer’s hosting or backup tools is risky. Maintain an off-site backup (ideally automated to cloud storage) so that even in the worst-case scenario, you can redeploy your site independently.
Backing up data properly, testing restore procedures, and rotating credentials take time. Include this work in your ongoing maintenance budget. Skipping it may seem like a small savings until your entire platform is down and you’re paying a developer emergency rates to recover it.
Get a Second Opinion or Oversight Partner
It’s smart to have a second developer or consultant occasionally review your setup. Technology audits by a third party can identify red flags, outdated frameworks, or control gaps. It’s not about distrust; it’s about risk management. A qualified outsider can often spot what a developer has obscured, intentionally or not.
Budget for periodic code and infrastructure reviews. Spending a small amount quarterly or annually is far cheaper than later having to untangle years of undocumented, unmaintainable code.
Use a Project Management Platform
Make sure all communications, tasks, and updates are tracked in a project management system such as Jira, Trello, Asana, or Basecamp. This ensures transparency about progress, priorities, and timelines. It also gives you a complete record of deliverables and approvals if disputes arise.
If your developer bills by the hour, this visibility becomes crucial. It helps you understand where time is being spent and whether progress matches your investment. Developers working informally by the hour may seem affordable until you realize you’re paying indefinitely for work that never truly finishes.
Establish Milestones and Payment Triggers
Never agree to pay large sums upfront without clearly defined milestones and deliverables. Use staged payments tied to functional progress that can be verified. If a developer misses deadlines or fails to deliver, you can pause payment until the agreed work is complete.
This approach requires project management time, testing, and oversight—so plan for those costs. Professional project governance protects both you and the developer.
Keep Access Logs and Permissions Clear
Maintain a list of everyone who has access to your digital assets, including developers, designers, and administrators. Remove users promptly when contracts end. Use tools like password managers or secure credential-sharing platforms so that logins can be revoked or rotated as needed.
Regular credential management should be part of your ongoing development budget, just like insurance. Neglecting it exposes your systems to unnecessary risk.
Build Developer Relationships on Transparency, Not Dependency
Most developers are trustworthy professionals who take pride in their work. But even honest relationships can sour when boundaries and ownership aren’t clearly defined. Transparency in contracts, documentation, and access ensures the partnership stays professional and productive.
You’re paying for expertise, not surrendering control. The core idea, business model, and brand are yours; you hire technical help to bring them to life.
The Bottom Line
You should always be able to walk away from a developer relationship with your business intact. That means you own your domains, hosting, and source code. You have documentation, repository access, and backups. You control third-party licenses and accounts.
And perhaps most importantly, you’ve budgeted for doing things the right way. It takes real time and expertise to build sustainable, maintainable software. A developer who charges hourly without structure or accountability might seem like a bargain at first, but if you’re left with broken code, outdated libraries, and no access, that cheap work quickly becomes your most expensive problem.
When you invest properly in ownership, documentation, and oversight, you’re not just protecting your technology… you’re protecting your business.
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