A Site Locked Inside the Host's Own Builder

Built in an evening, there for years

Many hosting plans come with a website builder: pick a template, drag in photographs, type over the sample text, publish. A site can be live the same evening.

What is less obvious is where that site lives. It exists inside the host's builder, in a format only that builder reads, and nowhere else.

That matters the day you want to leave, because of a price rise, a change of owner, or a feature you need. There is often nothing to take with you.

Signs your site lives inside a builder

• You edit it by logging into the hosting account's control panel.
• There are no files you could download and open elsewhere.
• The editor carries the host's name, not a platform's.
• The help pages never mention exporting or moving a site.
• The templates come only from the builder's own collection.

The second settles it. A portable site is made of files and usually a database that can be downloaded and run on another host. A builder site exists only where it was built.

What portable means

A site built on an open platform such as WordPress, or as plain files, can be copied to any host that supports it. Its files and database are yours to download, back up and hand to any developer.

A builder site is different. Its template is licensed for use inside the builder, and its pages are stored in the builder's own format.

An export, where one exists, is usually partial: a blog feed, or a static copy nobody can edit.

What the business actually owns

The domain name, if it is registered in the business's name. If it was registered through the host as part of the plan, check whose name is on it.

The words you wrote and the photographs you took, though the only copies may now be inside the builder, often resized.

Not the design, which belongs to the builder, and not the structure of the pages, which cannot be lifted out.

In practice, ownership means what you can take with you. For many builder sites that is a domain and a folder of originals, if someone kept them.

Why it matters before you want to leave

Hosts raise prices, change plans and are bought by other companies. Builders get replaced by new versions, and old sites sometimes have to be rebuilt inside the new one by hand.

A business that cannot leave has to accept whatever comes next. The host knows that moving is expensive for you, and so do you.

Knowing this in advance turns a crisis into a plan: save what you can now, and decide when the rebuild happens rather than having it decided for you.

A worked example

A pet photographer working from a home studio and on location had a site made in her host's builder: a home page, session prices, an enquiry form and galleries from several hundred sessions.

Four years on, the host announced that the builder was being replaced, and that sites on the old version would need to be rebuilt in the new one or moved elsewhere.

There was no export. The pages could be copied by hand, and the gallery photos downloaded one at a time, at the reduced size the builder had stored.

The mechanism was the builder's own format. Nothing in the site had ever been a file the business could take.

The rebuild went onto an open platform, on hosting where the files and database can be downloaded. The originals came from her archive drives, and the text was copied page by page.

Every old gallery address was redirected to its new page, and the domain moved to the business's own account with a domain registrar, separate from the hosting.

The first full backup of the new site, files and database together, was downloaded the week it launched.

Rescue what you can now

Even if you are staying for the moment, copy every page's text into documents, with the page address at the top of each.

Gather the original photographs into storage you control. If the only copies are in the builder, download them now, at the largest size it offers.

Save the blog posts with their dates, the form fields and where submissions go, and screenshots of each page's layout. A rebuild goes faster with all of it in one folder.

Keep the addresses working

A rebuild usually changes page addresses. Old links, bookmarks and search results keep pointing at the old ones, and lead to error pages once the site moves.

Keep the list of old addresses and redirect each to its new page on the new site. Keep the same domain, too, since everything the business has earned in search is attached to it.

If your Google My Business listing or social profiles link to a page that has moved, change those links too.

Build on something you can take with you

The next site should sit on an open platform, on hosting where the files and database can be downloaded, with backups the business holds itself.

Register the domain separately, under the business's own name, with login details the business keeps. Keep original photographs and the text in your own storage.

And ask the developer to write down every login and where everything lives, so the knowledge does not leave with one person either.

The counter-case

Not every builder site needs rescuing this month. A one-page placeholder or a short-lived event site has little to lose.

If the builder still works for the business and the price is fair, there is no need to move today. Keep copies, own the domain, and plan the rebuild for when it suits you.

The risk is not the builder itself. It is discovering, on the day you need to move, that there is nothing to move.

The order to do it in

1. Check the domain is registered in your name.
2. Look for an export in the builder's help pages.
3. Ask the host what you can take with you.
4. Copy every page's text into documents.
5. Gather the original photos into storage you control.
6. List every page address for later redirects.
7. Plan the rebuild on a portable platform.

Step one comes first for a reason. The domain is the address customers and search engines know, and a business that controls it can rebuild anywhere.

Hosts change hands as well as plans, which is covered in when your host is bought by another company.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.