The Short Answer
This depends entirely on what the contract actually says, and a surprising number of Calgary firm owners have never sat down and actually read theirs. Some agencies hand the firm true ownership of the site — hosting, domain, and code all in the firm's own hands. Others build on a platform they alone control, where the site can vanish or get gutted the instant a monthly payment lapses, simply because the firm never owned the underlying platform in the first place.
The Three Ownership Setups a Firm Might Actually Be In
Full ownership: the firm holds the domain, the hosting, and every line of code outright. Stop paying the maintenance retainer and the site keeps humming along exactly as it was — the firm simply stops getting fresh work done on it.
Platform lock-in: the agency built the site on a proprietary system or template engine that only they control. Miss a payment and the site can disappear outright, because there was never a portable version of it that the firm actually owned.
Hosting lock-in: the firm technically owns the code, but the agency holds the hosting account and the domain registration. Stop paying and the site goes dark anyway, even though the content legally belongs to the firm, until hosting gets untangled and moved elsewhere.
If you can't say off the top of your head which of these three describes your own website, that's worth finding out now — before a dispute forces the question on you at a bad moment.
James Harmiden · Founder & CEO, Lexscale.ai
The Fastest Way to Actually Find Out
Ask the current agency plainly for the domain registrar login, hosting account access, and a full export of the site's code and content. A reasonable agency hands this over without friction, or points to the ownership language in the contract if the situation is genuinely more complicated than that.
Every site Lexscale.ai builds for a Calgary firm ships with full ownership from day one — domain, hosting access, and code, all in the firm's own hands. AI website design for Calgary law firms covers how that's structured on every engagement.
Where This Fits Into the Bigger Picture
This question doesn't exist in isolation. It connects directly to Is Your Calgary Law Firm's Website Mobile-Friendly Enough for Clients?, SEO Agency vs. AI Website Agency: What Does a Calgary Law Firm Need?, and Should a Calgary Law Firm Build Content for Interprovincial Relocation Clients? — three pieces of the same underlying decision a Calgary firm has to make. Once those are settled, the natural next questions are Should a Calgary Law Firm Build Content on Alberta's Auto Insurance Market?, How Much Does SEO Cost for a Law Firm in Calgary?, How Long Does It Take to See SEO Results in Calgary?, and How Do I Get My Calgary Law Firm to Show Up in ChatGPT and AI Search?. For the complete picture of how Lexscale.ai approaches all of this for Calgary law firms specifically, see AI Website Design for Calgary Law Firms and AI SEO for Calgary Law Firms, or start from the Calgary growth hub and browse everything at once.