In the Internet world your domain name is the equivalent of your house, and the land the house sits on. Just as with real estate the domain name has a legal owner. In real estate the deed or title tells who legally owns a piece of physical property. On the Internet, domain names have the same type of information.

Anytime a domain name is registered for use it is assigned a registrant and an administrative contact. Whoever appears in the registrant field is legally the owner of that domain name. The administrative contact, while not the official owner, is the master email address of record. Any changes to the domain name must be approved by whoever has access to the email address.

No matter whom you work with to design and host your website either you or your company should always be listed as the registrant.

It is extremely important to check this yourself. You can use any WHOIS service to lookup this information for free. One we recommend is:
http://www.domaintools.com

Simply type your domain name such as blainehilton.com in the lookup field and click search. Scroll down to the registrant information section. If this is not in your name then you may have an issue. Many unethical hosting companies and web design outfits will register the domain to themselves. This way you must stay their client, because they, not you own the domain name.

Would you have the deed to your house put in the name of your plumbing company?