Do I own the code and the accounts?

Question

VX-N · Accepted Answer

Yes. The source code and the accounts are yours, in your name, from the start. You are not renting access to your own system, and you are not locked into VX-N to keep it running. This matters more than it sounds. A common arrangement in this market is that the builder holds the hosting, the domain, the API keys, and the repository, which converts a one-time build into permanent leverage over the client. Leaving becomes a rebuild. The arrangement is rarely presented as lock-in — it is presented as convenience, 'we handle all that for you' — and it is convenient right up until the relationship changes and you discover your business runs on accounts you cannot enter. Ownership is specific, so check the pieces individually: the code repository, the hosting account, the domain registrar, the database, every API key, and every third-party subscription the system depends on. Each of those should be an account in your company's name that the builder is invited into — not the reverse. The practical test is blunt: if the builder disappeared tomorrow, could you revoke their access and hand a new developer everything they need by end of day? If any single piece fails that test, you do not own the system; you own a description of it. Contract language matters too. In Canada, copyright in commissioned code defaults to the author absent an agreement otherwise — the contractor, not the client — so ownership needs to be assigned in writing, not assumed from the invoice. The clause to look for is present-tense assignment of the work product on payment. What you do not need is exotic: a paragraph of plain language beats a licensing schedule you cannot read, and a vendor who resists the paragraph has answered the question. There is one honest carve-out to understand: builders reasonably retain their own pre-existing tools and general-purpose libraries, and you get a licence to use them within your system. That is normal and fine. The line is whether your business logic — your data, your workflows, the code that encodes how you operate — is yours without condition. Ask any prospective partner the question in writing before you sign. The answer, and how quickly it comes, tells you what kind of relationship you are actually entering.