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Insights · Website ownership
Know what keeps it running.
Know what you keep.
A website build, hosting and ongoing care are different responsibilities. Before comparing a monthly fee, establish who keeps the site available, who changes it, who pays renewals and what happens if support ends. A useful agreement makes those responsibilities visible rather than relying on the word “maintenance”.
This guide explains LYM’s current published fixed-price website offer and provides a checklist for comparing any supplier. A separately agreed client project can have different terms. Your written scope and contract should confirm the arrangements for your particular site.
Separate the build from the ongoing work
| Responsibility | What to confirm | LYM’s published package position |
|---|---|---|
| Build | Pages or sections, supplied content, integrations, revisions and acceptance. | Choose the relevant fixed-price scope or agree a tailored quotation. |
| Hosting | Who supplies it, what remains available and who pays the platform. | LYM-hosted builds keep their hosting without a separate monthly hosting payment. Shopify is different: its own plan remains payable. |
| Included care | Start date, duration and the specific work covered. | The published packages include twelve months of care. Signature also describes its included changes. Confirm the applicable package scope. |
| Ongoing support | Changes, checks, response expectations and exclusions after the included period. | Optional Care, Studio and Growth support are priced upon consultation, not an assumed universal monthly rate. |
| Third-party services | Booking tools, paid apps, licences, payment processing and renewals. | Third-party charges and integrations must be checked separately; a build price does not make them free. |
What changes when the included year ends?
LYM’s current care section distinguishes Care, Studio and Growth. Care covers security, checks, small updates and domain renewal within the agreed scope. Studio adds content updates, a website improvement and Google listing upkeep. Growth adds an article, review requests and AI-search reporting. Ongoing support is optional and priced upon consultation.
Those descriptions are a starting point for a written allowance, not a promise of unlimited work. Before choosing support, specify what counts as a small change, how requests are prioritised, which integrations are covered and how larger work is quoted. Additional growth or content work during the included year is separately scoped, taking account of the care already included.
Stopping LYM care does not, under the published offer, remove the hosting from an LYM-hosted site. Changes, checks, support and renewal handling are separate from keeping that site hosted. A Shopify subscription, paid apps and processing charges remain separate obligations to the relevant providers.
Keep an ownership and renewal register
The domain should be registered in your name, as LYM’s offer states. Record the registrar, the business-side account holder, the renewal date and who will pay it. Knowing the domain name is not the same as being able to recover the registrar account.
Apply the same discipline to the host or commerce platform, booking tool, analytics and enquiry destination. Record where access is managed, but keep passwords and recovery codes in an appropriate secure store. For each paid service, name an owner and a renewal reminder; a supplier’s invoice should not be the only record.
A short responsibility register is more useful than an unqualified “fully managed” label. For example: the business approves new service copy, the agreed support provider publishes it, and a named person checks the enquiry reaches the right inbox. If one of those steps has no owner, write down the gap.
Ask about handover before you need it
- Files and rights. Confirm the source files, approved content and usage rights you receive. Third-party fonts, photography or software may have their own licence terms.
- Dependencies. Identify any forms, server functions, booking connections or subscriptions that a new host would need. A folder of static files is not necessarily a complete working replacement.
- Notice. Record the notice period and the person responsible for the move. LYM’s public offer states that if we stop hosting your site, you receive the files and ninety days’ notice.
- Continuity. Plan the domain and form transition, check important URLs and verify enquiries before retiring the old arrangement.
- Access. Agree what the incoming provider needs and remove obsolete access once the handover checks are complete.
A move is not finished merely because a new homepage loads. Forms, redirects, booking flows and important search URLs need their own checks. Agree who runs those checks and what evidence counts as completion before starting the move.
Choose support for the work you actually need
A business updating a menu once a quarter has a different support requirement from a shop changing stock daily. List the likely requests, the integrations that matter and the consequences of a failure. Then compare the proposed allowance with those needs and ask for a clear quote.
Use the website-cost guide for the wider purchase comparison and the booking requirements guide where a diary or appointment journey is involved. Published package prices and scope are maintained on the Websites page; this article does not create a new support tariff or service-level agreement.
Download the website responsibility register (CSV). Complete it with your supplier and use the unresolved rows to shape the written scope.
Review Care, Studio and Growth · Discuss the support you need