If your web developer is also your web host - you need to understand the answer to this very basic question.  Do you own the content on your website or does your web developer?  If you decide to move your website somewhere else for hosting - can you take everything with you?

This issue isn't treated uniformly by all web developers, so make sure it is clear before you enter in to a business relationship.  We recommend you obtain a contract from your developer that states your rights. Our standard web development agreement explicitly states that the client has exclusive rights to all the content they provide or for which they pay us to develop on their behalf.  If they ever wanted to move their website - they could take all their content with them.

Conversely, we have some services that allow our clients to use shared content that we have developed and own. For example, we offered a turn key IDX solution for real estate agents.  The solution came with content we developed, which is shared by all subscribers to our service. Our development agreement for this turn key solution states that we retain ownership of this content and it can only be used as a part of our subscription service.

We believe it all comes down to common sense. If you provided or paid for the content it should - and does - belong to you. If you didn't provide or pay for the content - then it doesn't belong to you.  While this seems like common sense to us - it isn't always the case and web developers can - and do - right their contracts differently.