If I sell my business, does the website come with it?

It should, but it only does automatically if you actually own it. If you are the registered owner of the domain and the site was built for you rather than rented from a platform, transferring it is a matter of handing over logins and updating the account holder, same as handing over the keys to a truck. If a provider registered the domain in their own name, or the site only exists inside a contract tied to you personally, it does not transfer on its own - a buyer can end up closing on a business with no working website, or your name still on a contract for a business you no longer own.

Who owns the domain when a business is sold?

Whoever is listed as the registrant. If you or your LLC registered the domain, it is a business asset you can assign to the buyer in the purchase agreement, the same way you would assign a vehicle title or an equipment lease. If your website provider registered it in their own account as part of a bundled plan, the domain may not be yours to assign at all, and the buyer has to either negotiate with that provider directly or start over with a new web address - which then has to be reconnected to your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and every customer who already knows your old one.

Can a buyer take over my website subscription instead of building a new one?

Sometimes, but a lot of managed home-services website contracts are written around the person who signed them - a personal guarantee, a term commitment, sometimes an early-termination fee if the account changes hands mid-contract. Handing the account to a buyer can mean the provider re-underwrites the new owner, restarts the contract clock, or simply will not do it without a new sign-up. None of that is a deal-breaker on its own, but it is exactly the kind of loose end that shows up during due diligence and slows a closing down, or gives a buyer a reason to knock a few thousand dollars off the offer.

How do I transfer a RunCabin website to a new owner?

Because there is no contract and the domain is registered to you, transferring RunCabin at a sale is simple: update the account email and payment method to the new owner, or have them create an account and move the domain to it. There is no provider approval to wait on and no early-termination fee, because there was never a term to break. The site keeps running the whole time at $39.99/mo, flat, so the buyer walks into a working website and a working Google listing on day one instead of a gap.

RunCabin Blog · Before you sign

If I sell my business, do I lose my website?

August 31, 2026 · 8 min read

Only if you never actually owned it. A website is an asset like your van, your equipment, or your customer list - it can transfer to a buyer at closing just as cleanly. But it only does that if you are the one holding the keys. A lot of owners find out they are not, and they usually find out at the worst possible time: mid-negotiation, when a buyer's attorney asks a simple question nobody thought to ask before.

Home-services roll-ups are buying up plumbing, HVAC, roofing, and landscaping companies at a pace that used to be rare for a business this size. Plenty of other sales are smaller and quieter - an owner retiring and selling to a longtime employee, two competitors merging, a handyman handing the company to a son or daughter. In every version, the website almost never makes it onto the list of things people think to check. Then it becomes the thing that stalls the closing by two weeks.

What "the business" actually includes online

When people say "the website," they usually mean four separate things bundled into one word, and a sale can split them apart in ways nobody intended:

The domain - the web address itself. This is the one every other piece points back to.
The site - the pages, the photos, the years of reviews and before-and-afters you have built up.
The business email - you@yourbusiness.com, and every account, vendor relationship, and customer thread tied to it.
The Google Business Profile - not technically part of the website, but it lives or dies with the same domain and the same verified owner.

A clean sale moves all four to the new owner without a hiccup. A messy one leaves the buyer with a business, a truck, and a phone number - and no way to get to the website that used to bring in the leads.

Why it falls through the cracks

Most purchase agreements for a business this size are built around a fairly standard checklist: equipment, vehicles, inventory, the customer list, the lease if there is one, sometimes the trade name. A lawyer drafting that list is thinking in terms of physical assets and contracts, and a website does not fit neatly into either category unless someone specifically flags it.

The result is that the domain and site get assumed into "and everything else" - and "everything else" is exactly where ownership questions hide. Nobody finds out the site was never really the seller's to give until the buyer tries to log in after closing and cannot.

Two different ways this goes wrong

The domain was never registered to the business

If a website company registered your domain in its own account as part of a bundled plan, you were never the legal registrant - you were a customer of a service that happened to use that address. You cannot assign what you do not own. A buyer who was told "the website is included" can end up needing to build a brand-new site on a brand-new domain after closing, then spend months re-pointing the old Google listing, reviews, signage, and every returning customer's muscle memory to a web address that did not exist a year ago.

The website is tied to a contract, not to the business

Managed home-services website providers commonly write their agreements around the person who signed - a personal guarantee, a term commitment, sometimes an early-termination clause if the account is closed before the contract runs out. That is a very different thing from an asset the business owns outright. When the business changes hands, the provider may require its own approval to transfer the account, may re-underwrite the new owner as a fresh customer, or may simply treat a change in ownership as a cancellation and start the clock over on a brand-new contract at whatever the current rate happens to be. None of that is catastrophic by itself. But it is exactly the kind of open item a buyer's due diligence flags, and open items get negotiated - usually against the seller, in the form of a lower offer or a delayed close while it gets sorted out.

What a buyer's attorney actually asks

If you are on the selling side, it is worth hearing these questions once before a buyer asks them, because the first time you hear them should not be across the table:

Who is the registered owner of the domain, and is it assignable?
Is the website hosted under a contract, and does that contract survive a change of ownership - or does it need the provider's consent?
Is there an early-termination fee if the current owner closes the account as part of the sale?
Does the business email domain transfer, or does it live on a personal or provider-owned account?
Who is the verified owner of the Google Business Profile, and can that be reassigned without losing the review history?

A seller who can answer all five without a phone call to a vendor looks like someone selling a tidy business. A seller who has to say "let me check with the website company" has just told the buyer's side there is a loose thread - and in a negotiation, loose threads get pulled.

Making it a clean asset before anyone is buying anything

You do not need a sale on the calendar to fix this. The habits are the same ones that make a business easier to run day to day, and they happen to be exactly what a future buyer will want to see:

Register the domain in the business's name, not a personal account you might lose track of and not a provider's account you do not control. If you are not sure which one is true right now, that is worth checking today, sale or no sale.
Avoid providers whose contract requires their sign-off to transfer or cancel. A no-contract, month-to-month arrangement is not just easier to leave - it is easier to hand to somebody else, because there is no clock and no approval to wait on.
Keep the business email on your own domain, so it moves with the domain instead of vanishing with a personal Gmail account or a provider-hosted inbox that stops working the day you stop paying that specific bill.
Make sure the Google Business Profile is verified under a business-controlled login, not a personal account nobody can find the password for two years later.
Write down where everything lives - registrar, hosting account, email provider, GBP login - in one place. It sounds obvious and almost nobody does it, which is exactly why it is the first thing a buyer's attorney has to chase down.

These same habits also protect you if you are not selling - if your web designer disappears, or you decide to leave a provider for another one. A website you fully own is portable in every direction, not just toward a sale.

Where RunCabin sits

RunCabin builds and runs the site for $39.99/mo, flat - your own domain, your own business email, no setup fee, and no contract to renegotiate or break. Because there is no term commitment, there is nothing for a change of ownership to violate. Handing a RunCabin site to a buyer is a matter of updating the account email and payment method, or moving the domain to a new account - not a call to a provider asking permission, and not a fee for asking.

That is the practical upside of ownership showing up somewhere most owners do not think to look for it: not just at cancellation, but at the one moment when the whole business, website included, needs to change hands cleanly and quickly. A buyer who logs in on day one and sees the same working site and the same Google listing is a buyer who closes faster - and pays for a business that was actually put together, not a business with a website-shaped question mark in the middle of it.

A website you actually own

We build a real preview with your name, your work, and your city - before you pay anything. No contract, no setup fee, and your domain stays yours, whoever ends up running the business.

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