Website - ownership of source code

I’m currently looking at some web agencies to create an ecommerce site for me. Both the agencies say they will use their own bespoke system and source code to create the site (as opposed to a recognised open source system such as Magento). My concern is that if once they’ve built the site I decide to use a new agency to continue development in future, the new agency won’t be able to work with their bespoke coding.

The first agency said they’d be willing to sell me the source code for a further 50% cost of the original site build. The second agency have said they’d only give the relevant section of the code (e.g. if an update is to the product pages, they’d only give the code that was relevant for that area) but couldn’t give the base source code for the overall site (I hope this makes sense).

Anyway my question is, is this normal practice for agencies? It seems strange that they’d own source code for my business’ website.

Any tips or advice would be welcome. (I'm based in the UK by the way)

Thanks

 

It' not unusual, but not all agencies do it. Might be worth shopping around a bit more. I've been building sites for years and always provide the source.

Wherever possible it's better to work with open source as if you need changes later down the road you'll find it easier to find developers to work on it, and you won't be tied to these agencies.

 

I would insist on using an open source platform, unless your needs are very specialized then using a bespoke system really makes no sense. At the end of the day you're probably paying for design and support, so using an open source system will cut your future support costs down dramatically. I hate to say it but many firms develop bespoke systems simply to lock clients into their firm and most systems can rarely compare to publicly available systems ( plugins, updates, security ). Good luck.

 

Depends on what you're buying. You might have bought a license of that piece of software. You spent $150-ish on your (old) Windows XP license -- did you get the source code for it?

Some companies spend years in developing a software platform. It would be insane to try to bill a single customer for all they put in the process. Instead, they license the use of their software. Are you positively sure you don't fit this profile?