Who owns your website when an agency builds it?

Under Bridges · 25 July 2026

Under South African law, the person who writes the code owns it by default. Not the business that paid for it. That only changes if your contract says so, in writing.

The default is probably not what you assume

Most business owners assume that paying an invoice buys the thing they paid for. With software, that assumption is wrong often enough to be worth checking.

The Copyright Act 98 of 1978 gives first ownership of a computer program to the person who wrote it, or to their employer where it was written as part of the job. Commissioning work does not move that ownership on its own. The Act does treat a short list of commissioned works differently, including photographs and films, but computer programs are not on that list.

So if you hired someone to build your site and signed nothing about copyright, the reasonable reading is that they own the code and you have permission to use it.

What ownership changes in practice

For months, nothing. It matters on the day one of these happens:

• You want to move to a different developer and the current one will not hand over the source code
• You are selling the business and a buyer's due diligence asks who owns the platform
• You want to reuse part of the build in a second product
• The relationship ends badly and the site is the leverage

Owning the work means none of those become a negotiation. You ask for the files and they are yours.

The clause to look for

An assignment of copyright in South Africa has to be in writing and signed by the person giving it up. A verbal promise does not do it. Neither does a friendly email, in most readings.

A well drafted agreement will say four things:

• Copyright in the deliverables assigns to the client on final payment
• Any pre-existing tools or libraries the agency reuses are licensed to you perpetually, so nothing stops working
• Source code, design files, and access credentials are handed over at the end of the project
• The agency may show the work in its portfolio unless you ask otherwise

That second point is the one people miss. No agency writes every line from scratch, and one that claims to is either inexperienced or charging you to reinvent a contact form. What matters is that their reusable pieces come with a licence that never expires, so the handover is real.

Questions worth asking before you sign

Five questions, and you want plain answers to all of them:

• On final payment, do I own the copyright in what you build?
• Will I get the source code and the design files?
• Who holds the domain, the hosting account, and the DNS?
• If I hire someone else next year, what do they need from you?
• What parts of the build are yours, and how are they licensed to me?

Hesitation on the third question is worth paying attention to. Domains registered in an agency's name, rather than the client's, are one of the most common ways businesses lose control of their own web presence.

This is general information about how copyright ownership usually works, not legal advice. For a specific contract, ask an attorney.

Common questions

Does paying in full mean I own the website?

Not on its own. Payment settles the invoice. Copyright moves only where there is a written, signed assignment saying it does. Many contracts include one, and some deliberately do not.

What if I never signed anything?

Then the developer most likely holds the copyright and you have an implied licence to use the site for the purpose it was made for. You can usually still ask for a written assignment after the fact, though you have less leverage once the work is delivered and paid for.