What is source code ownership?
Source code ownership means the files your website is actually made of are in your hands, so you can take them to another host, another developer or another tool without asking permission. When a platform only shows you your pages inside its own editor, you own the content but not the working site.
Why it matters to a shop
One day the platform raises its price, changes its terms, or shuts down, and you go to leave and find you cannot. Your words and photos copy out; the working site does not, so you rebuild from zero and pay for the same website twice. The everyday version is smaller and more common: you want something the tool cannot do, you hire a developer, and the first thing they ask for is the source.
Three things to check before you pay
- Ask one sentence before you start building: can I download the whole site as files, and on which plan? Treat a vague answer as a no. Ours is not vague — Storefront Pro, $79 a month, and you can open a real export at github.com/ctingyi404-cloud/naratake-export-example before you pay anything.
- Do the export once, early, while nothing depends on it. On Storefront Pro the download writes the whole site out as a folder of files — a real Next.js project — and you open it and confirm the pages, the images and the styles are all actually in there. LocalSite Studio, our desktop app, exports the same way with no per-export limit.
- Check that the folder still works away from the platform: hand it to any developer and ask them to run it. The export carries a short instructions file addressed to exactly that person, so they are not starting from nothing. It is genuinely yours the day it runs somewhere that is not us.
Common mistake: Believing that exporting your text and photos is the same as owning the site. A spreadsheet of your menu is not a website.