The five questions
Who is listed as the registrant on the domain. Whose card pays for hosting. Whether you are an owner on the Google Business Profile or only a manager. Whether you can log into Search Console yourself. Whether the last contract says who owns the website copy.
If any of those are “the marketing company” or “I don’t know,” you do not fully own the shop’s presence. That is a lawyer question as much as a website one. I will tell you how to check each in five minutes. I will not pretend a pretty rebuild fixes a domain you do not control.
What I will not do
I will not register the domain in my name. I will not park the site on a builder license you cannot take with you. I will not be the only person who can see Search Console. If we stop working together, you still have a website: the files, the domain, the listing.
Agencies that hold those in their own account are not always acting in bad faith. It is just how the default packages are sold. The default is a problem when you want to leave.
The $500 write-up
Before a rebuild I go through what you already have — including ownership. You keep the document either way. If we build, it comes off the invoice. A careless new site can throw away rankings you already earned. I would rather know that first.
