Guides
Domain, email and Google: what is yours and what is borrowed
Many people only find out the domain was not in their name on the day they want to change who looks after their site. This is what is worth checking today, while it is still easy.
7 min readReviewed
In short
- Yours is whatever is in your name and can leave with you: the domain, the email account on your domain, your Google Business Profile and the list of people who gave you their email.
- Borrowed is whatever only exists while a platform allows it: followers, the reach of your posts, and a free address like name.wixsite.com.
- On every account that matters, you are the owner and whoever works for you is a manager — never the other way round.
- Check three things today: whose name the domain is in and when it renews, who administers your email, and who is the primary owner of your Google Business Profile.
The map, in one table
| What | Whose it is | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Domain (yourname.com) | Yours, if it is registered in your name | The holder, the renewal date and who pays it |
| Email on your domain | Yours, if the admin account is yours | Who the administrator is and which account it sits in |
| Google Business Profile | Yours, if you are the primary owner | Who is an owner and who is only a manager |
| Social pages | The account is yours; the reach is the platform's | Who is an admin, and whether there is more than one |
| Followers | The platform's | Whether you have another way to reach them (email) |
| Free address (name.wixsite.com) | The platform's | If you want to move, move early |
The domain: the one address that is truly yours
The domain is the name people type to find you, and it is the base of your email. It has two parts worth keeping apart: the holder (whose name it is registered in) and the account it is managed from (the registrar's panel, where it is renewed and pointed somewhere). Both should be yours. Whoever looks after your site can have access; they do not need to be the owner.
- The holder: your name or your company's (for .pt, with your tax number). Not the name of whoever built the site, nor the agency's.
- The registrar account: with an email address of yours that you can get into today.
- Renewal: automatic, or with someone accountable and a date you know by heart.
- The transfer code: you do not need it now, but you need to know you will get it when you ask.
Email: the address belongs to the domain, the mailbox to an account
An address with your domain after the @ depends on it, but the messages live in an email service — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or the one from your host. Whoever holds the admin account of that service creates and deletes mailboxes and keeps the archive. If someone else set it up in their own account, ask to be made administrator.
A free Gmail account is yours too and is perfectly fine to start with. What is not yours is the address: if you ever move to your own domain, people who know you will keep writing to the old one for years. The later you move, the more it costs.
Google: owner, not just manager
Your Google Business Profile (what shows up on the map and beside searches) has roles: a primary owner, other owners and managers. The primary owner can remove everyone else. That seat is yours. You can see who is there in the profile settings, under «People and access».
- If someone who no longer works with you shows up as primary owner, ask them to hand the seat over while they still reply.
- If the profile was verified by someone who has disappeared, Google has an access request for these cases. It works, but it takes days and does not always succeed first time.
- The same goes for the site's statistics (Google Search Console and the like): the account should be yours, or at least shared with you as owner.
Social media: the account is yours, the audience is borrowed
An Instagram or Facebook page is in your name, but the platform decides who sees it. Two things depend on you: not having a single admin (lose that access and you lose the page) and having two-step verification switched on. And one thing only a website solves: a place where people who like your work leave you their email, so you can write to them without asking anyone's permission.
When someone works for you
- Give manager or collaborator access, not your password. Every one of these platforms has that role, and it is what lets you remove access in a minute.
- The recovery email on each account should be yours, not that of whoever created it.
- When the work ends, remove access the same day. Not out of distrust: out of tidiness.
- Keep one list of the accounts, with the email for each and the domain's renewal date.
Frequently asked
Whoever handles my site will not hand over the domain. What do I do?
Ask in writing for the transfer code and, if the domain is not in your name, a change of holder. If there is no reply, the domain's registry (for .pt, DNS.pt) has procedures for these cases — start there.
Do I really need email on my own domain?
Not to start: a Gmail address works. It helps when you write to people who do not know you yet, and changing address later costs more than starting with it.
Are my Google reviews mine?
They sit on your profile and stay there as long as the profile exists — one more reason for the profile to be in your name. You cannot take them elsewhere, but you do not lose them if you change your site or who builds it.
Is having two admins on social media not risky?
What is risky is having one and losing access to it. The second can be someone you trust or a second account of your own, both with two-step verification.