Website threatened to be taken down

Strawberry Swan

I initially started to design a website for a family member but didn't have time to finish it and tbh was a bit out of my depth. I bought the domain and hosting for it. He hired a professional company to design it. They charged him a monthly subscription, no upfront fee. After a year he wants to cancel the subscription but they are saying if he does the website will go down. Is this normal and within their rights?

Seth Brundle

Is it hosted on your hosting account or the other companies?
What was the monthly subscription for (hosting, rental of web site, maintenance or what)?
Who owns the site, him or the other company (what's in the original contract with them)?

Strawberry Swan

kbannon wrote: »

Is it hosted on your hosting account or the other companies?
What was the monthly subscription for (hosting, rental of web site, maintenance or what)?
Who owns the site, him or the other company (what's in the original contract with them)?

It is hosted on my account that I set up. At least there are recurring charges a year after I set it up. I will double check with the hosting company on Monday.

The monthly subscription is for:
mobile friendly website
domain (web address)
8 email accounts
6GB of storage
unlimited sections (pages)
search engine optimisation
statistics & reporting
online event booking

He didn't sign a contract with them. I don't know who owns it.

Seth Brundle

Your brother entered an agreement with them. He needs to read this. This would be the basis for any legal action that may arise.
However, if the site is indeed hosted on your account then you need to change all passwords in case they have them.

M.T.D

If you enter the domain name into whois.com the results should tell you where the site is hosted.
If you registered the domain and still have access you can check where the DNS points to.

Consider this situation.
If you buy a car (no HP "money up front") it is your car. If you lease a car, no money "up front" just monthly payments, and later decide to stop making payments the lease company will certainly want their car back.
Although a second hand website might have no resale value you should still expect it to be "repossessed"

If I was creating websites on a rental basis it would be on my hosting, and clients would have limited if any access to it, to avoid problems of clients "stealing" the site.

You might be able to make them an offer and get the site transferred to your hosting but this would be unlikely. The site is unlikely to be stand alone static HTML and so would probably not function outside of the platform it is on.

mneylon

You'd really need to see what was actually agreed to.

Is the website being hosted by you or by the designer?

Strawberry Swan

Blacknight wrote: »

You'd really need to see what was actually agreed to.

Is the website being hosted by you or by the designer?

There was no agreement per se but part of the cost did include hosting.

I've since looked into the issue and found out it is hosted by this other designer. He was given all passwords to the control panel of the hosting site I set up, not by me, someone else but I shouldn't have given them to anyone else. So it looks like if he'll stop paying he will lose it but I think I'd be able to set up a new website for him. Anyway, lessons learned.

goz83

Strawberry Swan wrote: »

There was no agreement per se but part of the cost did include hosting.

I've since looked into the issue and found out it is hosted by this other designer. He was given all passwords to the control panel of the hosting site I set up, not by me, someone else but I shouldn't have given them to anyone else. So it looks like if he'll stop paying he will lose it but I think I'd be able to set up a new website for him. Anyway, lessons learned.

PM me the domain name

mneylon

Strawberry Swan wrote: »

There was no agreement per se but part of the cost did include hosting.

I've since looked into the issue and found out it is hosted by this other designer. He was given all passwords to the control panel of the hosting site I set up, not by me, someone else but I shouldn't have given them to anyone else. So it looks like if he'll stop paying he will lose it but I think I'd be able to set up a new website for him. Anyway, lessons learned.

If I can help please email me directly: michele@blacknight.com

Websites4u

typically if someone buys a website for a fee, then they own, or should own the website and get it emailed to them upon completion. If i did a website that you would pay me €5 per month and only paid for 1 month and then wanted the entire website that could cost €500 + , i wouldn't give it to you.

I would say in this case they did a website for free, their website and you are paying them monthly for you to use it.

Re domain names, if you have .com , if they bought it, you probably wont get it. If it is .IE, then you can transfer ownership.

Hope that helps, have a nice weekend everyone!