Your Dev Shop Still Has the Login and You Don't

Quick test. Can you log into your domain registrar right now, without emailing anyone? Your hosting account? The repository where your code lives? If the answer is "I'd have to ask our developer," you don't own your product. You're renting it from someone who happens to like you today.

This comes up more than people expect. A founder hires a freelancer or a small agency, the app ships, everyone's happy, and nobody ever writes down who holds the keys. Then six months later the relationship sours, or the developer goes quiet, or they just raise their rates and hold the account hostage until you pay. None of that is illegal. It's just what happens when access was never handed over in the first place.

The handoff nobody planned for

Most contracts talk about deliverables and payment schedules. Almost none of them specify who owns the AWS account, who's the admin on the domain, or where the source code actually lives once the project wraps. Everyone assumes ownership transfers automatically because you paid for it. It doesn't. Access is a separate thing from a finished product, and it has to be explicitly handed over, account by account, with you as the primary owner.

What ownership actually means

Real ownership looks boring. It means:

• Your business email is the primary contact on the domain registrar, not the developer's.
• You have admin access to hosting, DNS, and any third party services (payment processor, email sender, analytics).
• The code lives in a repository you control, under your organization, with full commit history intact.
• Environment variables, API keys, and credentials are documented somewhere you can find them without a phone call.

None of this is about distrust. Good developers hand this over without being asked twice. The problem is the ones who don't, and you usually can't tell the difference until you need access and don't have it.

Ask before you sign, not after you're stuck

If you're about to hire someone to build your app, put the handoff terms in writing before the project starts. Ask who owns what during development and what gets transferred at launch. A shop that hesitates on this question is telling you something.

This is one of the first things we set up with every client at Cedrix: your domain, your hosting, your repo, from day one, in your name. If you're validating an idea and want to see how that looks before committing to a full build, our free MVP offer is a low risk way to start. And if you're already mid project and not sure who actually holds the keys to your own product, get in touch and we'll help you sort it out.