The first thing to check is whose name the company’s domain and accounts are in. If the answer is “the agency,” those tools are not the company’s. They can be used while the relationship lasts, but someone else owns them, and that changes everything the day the relationship ends.

It happens more often than people think, and almost no one notices until it is too late.

What we are talking about

This is not a technical matter. These are tools that are worth money and should be treated like any other company asset.

The domain is the company’s name on the internet. The website and everyone’s email depend on it. Losing control of it means, in the worst case, that company mail stops arriving. It is the most serious case and deserves its own discussion.

The traffic analysis account (Google Analytics 4) holds the history of who visits the site. What matters is not today’s figure but the archive of years: without it, one month can no longer be compared with the same month a year earlier.

The advertising account (Google Ads) holds the budgets and the history of results the campaigns were optimized on. It is money and accumulated intelligence.

Then there’s the tracking code container (Google Tag Manager), the organic search analytics tool (Google Search Console), the Google listing (Business Profile), the social media pages and profiles, and, finally, the archive of materials produced over the years.

An account in the name of whoever manages it is not red tape. It is a lever, and one day someone will pull it.

Whose name they are in

There is only one rule: they go in the company’s name. Whoever manages them gets access, not ownership.

When that is not the case, there is rarely a scheme behind it. There is the rush of day one: a campaign is needed by Thursday, the account opens in two minutes under the address of whoever is opening it, and no one thinks about it again. But why it happened does not change the consequence. An account in the name of whoever manages it is not red tape. It is a lever, and one day someone will pull it.

It holds inside the company too: ownership goes to a company address, not to the personal mailbox of the marketing manager of the moment. An account tied to someone who leaves is lost the same way.

While the relationship lasts

During the collaboration the company must be able to look without asking permission. Not to check up on the supplier every week, but because receiving a figure and being able to verify it are two different things: the first is trusting, the second is knowing.

It means active access for one person inside the company, an up-to-date list of what is installed and where, the ability to see at any moment who touches what. It costs whoever grants it a few minutes. If the supplier hesitates to grant it, that is already an answer.

There is a flip side that concerns whoever provides the service: access should not live in one person’s head on the agency’s side either. An agency run that way exposes the client to a risk they did not choose.

Starting over with a new account means losing the data and history that the company paid for with real money.

When the relationship ends

Every collaboration ends, sooner or later. That is when you see how it was set up.

If the accounts are correctly registered, the handover takes minutes. If they are not, the trouble starts, and this is where the damage no one foresaw surfaces: the history does not transfer.

A new Analytics property does not inherit the previous one’s data: it stays where it was collected, and the company starts again without comparisons for the next two years. In Google Ads it is worse, because campaigns are optimized on results accumulated over time: starting from an empty account means paying again for learning already done, with real money. Starting over with a new account means losing the data and history that the company paid for with real money.

Then there is the archive, the part no one talks about and often the most valuable. Handing it back does not mean sending the PDFs already published, but the editable source files, the original photographs, the fonts with their licences. And above all the usage rights to the images paid for: for what uses, in which markets, for how long. It is the item no one asks about at the start and the one that holds everything up the day the company wants to reuse a photo it paid for five years earlier.

The right supplier puts the client in a position to fire it tomorrow. That is exactly why the client doesn’t.

Why a serious supplier says this

Setting things up this way seems to go against the supplier’s interest: it makes it easier to replace them. It is true. And it is fine anyway.

A client who stays because leaving is complicated stays out of constraint, and constraints wear out. When the break comes — and it comes — it comes in the worst way. The right supplier puts the client in a position to fire it tomorrow. That is exactly why the client doesn’t.

Tools are handed over to manage. The keys stay with the company.