Why we don't own your things.

The problem, stated plainly

There's a version of the agency business that works like this. You register the client's domain in your own name, because it's easier during setup. You build the site on a platform only you can access. You make the logo and keep the working files, releasing flattened exports as needed. You set up the ad account under your own Business Manager. You take the photographs and never issue a written licence.

None of this requires bad intent. Every step is defensible as convenience. But the cumulative result is a client who cannot leave — and both parties know it, even if neither says so.

That arrangement quietly damages the work. An agency that can't be left has no pressure to be worth staying with. A client who can't leave stops asking for better. The relationship becomes a subscription to inertia.

What we do instead

The client is the registrant. Always. Every domain we register is registered to the client's legal entity, with the client's address, and a role-based administrative contact the client controls. Never admin@islandtodo.mv.

We are administrators, not owners. On every platform that distinguishes ownership from access — Google Business Profile, Meta Business Manager, Google Ads, workspace accounts — the client holds the owner role and we hold an administrator role the client can revoke without contacting us.

Source files are released as they're made. Not at the end of a project, not on final payment. When the logo is drawn, the client gets the vector. When the guidelines are written, the client gets the working document. When photographs are delivered, they come with a written licence in the client's name.

Licences are bought in the client's name. Fonts, stock, plugins, software seats. If a licence can name a licensee, the licensee is the client. If it can't, we say so in the register so nobody discovers it later.

The register is handed over on request. Not on notice, not on exit, not after a conversation about renewal. On request, at any time, in a portable format.

We write the handover. If a client leaves, we produce a written document listing every asset, every credential location, every renewal date and every recovery path, and we answer the incoming agency's questions for thirty days at no charge.

What this costs us

Honesty about the trade-off, since the whole page is about being checkable.

It costs us leverage. A client who can leave in an afternoon sometimes does. It makes setup slower, because getting a client's own entity onto a registrar record properly takes longer than typing our own address. It occasionally costs us a project, when the client wants us to just handle it and doesn't want to sign anything.

We think that's a fair price. An agency that keeps clients by holding their property isn't an agency. It's a lien.

How to check we mean it

Don't take the page's word for it.

• Read the Asset Custody Policy. It's dated and versioned.
• Ask any client on our work index whether they hold their own domain. We'll make the introduction.
• Do a WHOIS lookup on any client domain we manage. The registrant organisation should be theirs, not ours. If it isn't, that's a finding, and we'd want to know.