Bottom line:
- Your provider might take your website down at any time. An errant suspension can happen, and it can take weeks of support tickets and appeals to get back online.
- Changing website providers means starting from scratch. Exporting some content or theme files does not give you a complete site another provider can host.
- Owning your website gives you more control and helps protect your business from disruption. You aren’t tied to a single hosting provider and can move your site if you need to.
Subscription website builders like Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace are convenient, but that convenience comes at the expense of owning a website you can take elsewhere. Your company’s website depends on their platform, their account rules, and their continued service. A suspension can take it offline, and leaving can mean paying to build it again.
Owning your site vs. subscribing to a website builder
Owning your site means having control of its domain registration, content, design, and custom code, with the files and account access needed to run it. You can change the layout, add features, and choose a different host without having to keep working with the company that built it.
With a subscription website builder, the working website depends on software you cannot take with you. You might own the words and photos, but you cannot necessarily move the finished site. Paying someone to design a Wix or Squarespace website does not remove that dependence on the platform.
Moving your website vs. rebuilding it
A custom site or self-hosted WordPress site can move with you. When you change hosts, you take the site’s files and data and run the same website with another provider. You keep your design, pages, and features.
Leaving a hosted website builder is different. An export may save some of your content, but it does not necessarily save the complete website. Your design, checkout, booking system, or other features may need to be rebuilt or replaced, which can be a complicated process.
Wix websites have to stay on Wix
You cannot move a Wix website to another hosting provider and keep running it as a Wix website. Wix says its sites depend on its own technology and servers. You can register your domain somewhere else, but that does not make the website itself portable.
You can own the content without being able to take the working website with you. Wix states:
Since Wix is a SaaS solution, your site must run on Wix’s servers.
“Exporting or Embedding Your Wix Site Elsewhere”
Shopify’s theme download is not a website you can host elsewhere
Downloading your Shopify theme does not give you a working website you can upload to another host. It contains design files built for Shopify’s platform, rather than the software and store data needed to run your shop independently.
Moving away from Shopify means rebuilding or adapting the store for another system. Shopify’s download documentation states:
Theme downloads don't include your store's products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts, images, or other files in Content > Files.
Squarespace cannot export your complete website
Squarespace can export supported content for importing into WordPress, but the export leaves out style settings, custom CSS, store pages, and several other types of content. It does not give you the complete website as it looks and works on Squarespace.
Your text and some images may be reusable, but the design and missing features need work on the new platform. Squarespace states:
Many features rely on our platform's JavaScript and CSS, so some content doesn't export.
An account suspension can interrupt your business
Account blocks can take an established business offline for days. A Wix service business owner lost access to their website and business email for 16 days. A Shopify bookseller had their store terminated after notifying Shopify about a compromised subdomain. Their store was restored after nearly ten days, and payouts resumed after nearly three weeks.
Verification requests can leave business owners waiting while their websites stay offline. A Wix developer had their website taken offline and could not access a completed client site while support requested passport and payment-card verification. Another Wix owner was still waiting for a decision after five days of successive verification requests, with their site and email offline.
Putting your website, domain, and business email under one account gives that provider control over more than your website. Losing access can stop customers reaching you and leave you unable to use business email, files, or calendars, even when those services run on another company’s software.
A Squarespace customer asked support to fix a Google Workspace lockout. Squarespace moved the domain to a new account but left the website behind, adding a missing website to the original problem. Relying on Squarespace for several business services compounded the problem, leaving the customer dependent on support instead of able to restore access themselves.
Suspensions can also interrupt a business before its website launches. Someone setting up a business website on Squarespace lost access to their account after buying a domain. Squarespace kept the account closed and refunded the charges.
Independent hosting is the safer choice for business continuity
We recommend independent hosting as the safer choice for keeping your business online. You own your website, control your domain, and can keep your own copies of the site and data. Your business does not depend on continued access to one company’s website-building platform.
With Wix, Shopify, or Squarespace, the company controls the platform your website needs to run. An account closure can cut off both your website and the tools used to manage it. With independent hosting, you can restore your existing website with another provider instead of waiting for an appeal or starting again.
Control of your domain and business accounts matters just as much. Keeping your domain registration, email, and website hosting separate reduces your reliance on any one provider and gives you more options if an account is blocked.
Confirm ownership before you pay
The handover should give your business control of the website, not leave everything in the developer’s account. Confirm these points before work starts:
- The domain is registered in an account your business controls.
- You receive the website files, business data, and access needed to run the site.
- You understand which design and code rights belong to you and which components are licensed.
- You can move the finished website to another provider.
Website ownership at Suffolk
We give you full ownership and account access for your finished website. You can keep working with us, manage your hosting yourself, or take the site to another provider. You do not have to learn how to manage hosting or source code just to own the website.
See our website services, hosting, and handover.
See small business website costs in 2026 for our starting prices and hosting options.