What “you own the stack” should mean in the contract

“You own everything” is easy to say in a sales call and easy to leave out of a contract.

When a business later tries to change agency, it often discovers that owning its software meant something narrower than it assumed.

Ownership is four things

Software ownership breaks into four parts, and each needs its own sentence in the contract.

1. The code
   • Intellectual property transfers to you on payment.
   • The repository lives in an account you control.
2. The data
   • Exportable at any time, in formats other software can read.
   • No fee for taking it with you.
3. The infrastructure
   • Servers, cloud accounts and domains registered to your business.
4. The credentials
   • Administrator access to everything, handed over at launch.

Read the licence clause twice

Check that intellectual property in the code transfers to you, rather than a clause granting you a “licence to use” the software. A licence gives you permission rather than ownership, and permission can come with conditions later.

Infrastructure in your name

Hosting accounts, domain registrations and third-party services should be registered to your business, with the agency added as a user. If the agency owns the account and invoices you for it, changing provider means asking their permission to move your own system.

Agree how it ends before it starts

The best time to agree how a relationship ends is before it begins. Look for these in the contract.

• Documentation delivered with the system, not on request.
• A defined handover period, at a fixed rate, if you move on.
• No fees for exporting your own data.
• No per-seat licence that rises as your team grows.

What we put in ours

Our engagements put infrastructure in the client's name from day one, hand over credentials and documentation at launch, and carry no per-seat licence. If a client stops working with us, the system keeps running. We would rather be retained for being useful than for being hard to leave. The terms are on our pricing page.