In short and in plain language
A website usually depends on more than one contract. These cover the web address, server space, mailboxes and upkeep.
The article shows which contracts your website depends on. It also shows what to watch for when you switch.
When you switch, move everything first. This means the address, the mailboxes and the content.
A list of all contracts helps with this.
We put all contracts around your website into one list. We also help with handing over the logins.
A website is rarely one contract. It is usually several: domain, hosting, mailboxes, maintenance and support, licences for extensions, often ad management and a certificate on top. Each of them carries its own term, its own renewal rule and its own notice period, and none of them follows the others. Anyone planning to leave or switch providers on 31 December therefore needs to know which deadline falls first. With a three-month notice period ending at the turn of the year, 30 September is the last day on which the notice has to reach the provider. This article sorts out what a website is contractually attached to, how to establish term, renewal and notice period for each contract, how a deadline is actually calculated under sections 187 to 193 of the German Civil Code, in which order to give notice so the site is not switched off before the migration, and what applies when your own company sells subscriptions to consumers.
Key takeaways
- A website usually hangs on several separate contracts. What governs is the deadline that falls first, not the one from your main service provider.
- With a three-month notice period ending 31 December, 30 September is the last day. The notice must arrive that day, not merely be sent.
- Towards consumers, a term in standard business terms may not exceed two years and the notice period may not exceed one month (section 309 BGB). Towards traders, section 309 BGB does not apply (section 310(1) BGB).
- Anyone concluding subscriptions with consumers through their own website needs the cancellation button under section 312k BGB. Without it, the contract can be terminated at any time without notice (section 312k(6) BGB).
- When switching providers you migrate first and give notice second: domain, mailboxes and content belong on the new target before the old contract ends.
- 91.7 per cent of German enterprises with ten or more persons employed had a website in 2025 (Eurostat; the survey covers all activities except agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining and quarrying and the financial sector). Behind each one sits at least one continuing obligation that rolls on by itself.
Why late September is the final date
The first reason is arithmetic, not contract law. If the term ends on 31 December and the notice period is three months, the declaration has to arrive by 30 September at the latest. Arriving means reaching the provider, not reaching the post office. Dropping a letter into a postbox on 30 September is too late; sending an email on the morning of 30 September to the address named in the contract is usually in time. In practice this distinction decides on another contract year more often than the contract wording does.
The second reason is the chain. A website hangs on several contracts that were rarely concluded on the same day. Hosting has been running since the last relaunch, the domain since the company was founded, the maintenance agreement since the last extension, the licence for an add-on since it was purchased. Each of these can carry a different term and a different notice period. What counts for a provider change is not the deadline of your main service provider but the earliest deadline in the chain, and that one needs finding before it passes.
The scale of it: 91.7 per cent (Eurostat) of German enterprises with ten or more persons employed had a website in 2025; across the 27 EU member states the figure was 79.0 per cent (Eurostat). The survey covers all activities except agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining and quarrying and the financial sector. Behind each of those sites sits at least one continuing obligation that rolls on without anyone doing anything. That is exactly where the appeal for the provider and the risk for the customer lie: a contract nobody terminates renews itself, and anyone realising in January that they should have acted in September pays for another period. What a contract year around a website actually costs is set out in our overview of website costs.
This article sorts the questions, it does not give advice
What a website is contractually attached to
The first task is an inventory, and it is unspectacular: one line per contract. Anyone doing it for the first time typically finds at least one item nobody remembers — an extension whose licence has been debited for three years, a second mailbox package from an old quote, a spare domain left over from a campaign. The overview below lists the items to check and states, for each of them, where term and renewal are set out.
| Contract | where the term is set out | Renewal | what matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain | in the contract with the registrar, per registration period | renews where the contract provides for it and no notice is given | The holder recorded in the registry decides on a transfer, not the administrator |
| Web hosting | in the provider tariff or quote | by the same duration or open-ended, depending on the contract | Check whether the notice period here is the longest in the chain |
| Mailboxes | tied to hosting or a separate contract | with the hosting | Stored messages and forwarding end with the contract |
| Maintenance and support | in the support contract, per service package | open-ended or by the same duration | Scope, response times, rights to the work results |
| Licences for extensions | in the licence terms of the vendor | automatic or on order, depending on the licence terms | Without a valid licence, updates stop, not the function |
| Ads and SEO support | in the support contract with the agency | monthly or by the same duration | Account and data access after the contract ends |
| TLS certificate | tied to hosting or a separate contract | automatic where configured | Lifetimes are getting shorter, renewal needs automating |
Two items are routinely underestimated. Mailboxes are where a provider change becomes visible first: when the hosting contract ends, access to the messages stored there usually ends with it, and forwarding beyond the contract end exists only where it was agreed. And the certificate expires at ever shorter intervals; why that matters for planning from 2026 is covered in our article on shorter certificate lifetimes.
Term, renewal, notice: three figures that get confused
All three appear in every contract, they mean different things, and confusing them costs money. The term is the period the contract is firmly concluded for. The renewal governs what happens after that period if nobody acts. The notice period is the lead time the declaration needs before the term ends. Only all three together produce the day on which you have to act.
An example from telecommunications shows how tightly the legislator now frames this. Under section 56(1) of the German Telecommunications Act, the initial term of a contract between a consumer and a provider of publicly available telecommunications services may not exceed 24 months, and before concluding the contract the provider is obliged to also offer a contract with an initial term of no more than twelve months. If such a contract continues beyond the initial term, the end user may terminate it at any time with a notice period of one month (section 56(3) TKG). The Telecommunications Act does not cover plain hosting or maintenance agreements, but the rule serves as a yardstick for what the legislator considers reasonable in continuing obligations.
Term
The fixed period. It starts either when the contract is concluded or when the service is provided — which of the two applies is in the contract and can make several weeks of difference.
Renewal
By the same duration or open-ended. The difference decides whether a missed deadline binds you for another year or only for one more month.
Notice period
The lead time before the term ends. Three months to 31 December means 30 September; one month means 30 November.
Receipt
Notice takes effect when it reaches the provider, not when it is sent. If you are close to the deadline, pick a route that evidences receipt.
Form
Text form is usually enough. A stricter form has to be agreed or prescribed by law; towards consumers, standard business terms may not demand more than text form.
Good cause
Under section 314(1) BGB a continuing obligation may be terminated for good cause without observing a notice period — in the case of a breach of duty, only after an unsuccessful warning.
The fourth figure appears in no contract and still decides the outcome: your own lead time. Changing provider is not an act of termination but a project with migration, testing and handover. Giving notice first and starting to plan afterwards means working against a clock you set yourself. The reverse order is the workable one, and there is more on that below.
Consumer or business customer: the distinction that changes everything
The limits on term and notice cited most often sit in section 309 BGB. For contracts covering the regular supply of goods or the regular provision of services or work, the provision prohibits three things in standard business terms: a term binding the other party for longer than two years; a binding tacit renewal, unless the contract is renewed for an indefinite period only and can be terminated at any time with a notice period of no more than one month; and a notice period of more than one month before the end of the initially agreed contract duration.
eine zu Lasten des anderen Vertragsteils längere Kündigungsfrist als einen Monat vor Ablauf der zunächst vorgesehenen Vertragsdauer
The scope is narrower than the wording suggests. Section 309 BGB addresses standard business terms, meaning conditions pre-formulated for a multitude of contracts, not an individually negotiated arrangement. And it applies to continuing obligations covering regular performance, not to a one-off contract for work to build a website. A maintenance agreement falls within it; the one-off delivery of a relaunch usually does not.
What really decides the matter is the customer's role. Section 310(1) BGB expressly excludes standard business terms used towards a trader, a legal person under public law or a special fund under public law from section 309 BGB. A trade business, a medical practice, an association with commercial operations — they normally conclude a website contract as traders. For them the two-year limit and the one-month notice period do not apply directly. What remains is section 307 BGB: even towards traders, a clause is invalid if it unreasonably disadvantages the contracting partner contrary to the requirement of good faith, and section 310(1) BGB expressly states that section 307 BGB also applies in the cases covered by section 309 BGB, with reasonable regard for the practices and customs applying in commercial dealings.
The most common misconception in practice
Working out the deadline: sections 187 to 193 BGB
Deadlines are not calculated by feel. Section 187(1) BGB governs the start: where an event is decisive, the day on which that event falls is not counted. Section 188(2) BGB governs the end: a period defined in weeks or months ends on expiry of the day of the last week or last month that corresponds by name or number to the day on which the event falls. For a notice period counted back from the end of the term, these rules apply accordingly. In practice, a three-month period ending 31 December is taken to run out on 30 September; anyone who wants some room lets the declaration arrive a few days earlier.
Two points save more deadlines in practice than any case law. The first is section 193 BGB: where a declaration of intent has to be made within a period and the last day falls on a Sunday, on a public holiday officially recognised at the place of declaration, or on a Saturday, the next working day takes the place of that day. Whether the provision fits a contractual period counted backwards is not clear-cut in every case, so nobody with a week still to spare should rely on it. The second is receipt: an email sent to a business address arrives when it can be expected to be retrieved. With a message sent late in the evening, arrival on the same day is therefore not a given.
{
"contract": "Web hosting",
"provider": "Example host",
"term_ends": "2026-12-31",
"notice_months": 3,
"must_arrive_by": "2026-09-30",
"route": "Email to the address named in the contract, plus recorded delivery",
"evidence": "Send log and acknowledgement of receipt filed",
"effect": "Contract ends on 31 Dec 2026, service continues until then"
}The reason for the last two lines is mundane and expensive: anyone who cannot evidence a termination has not given it, as far as a dispute is concerned. A filed acknowledgement, a send log or a proof of posting costs five minutes and decides on another contract year. It is also worth asking explicitly for confirmation of the termination date in the notice itself — that way it becomes clear early on whether provider and customer have the same day in mind.
Giving notice is not switching off
The inventory: an overview that holds up
The overview needs no software. A table with eight columns is enough: subject of the contract, provider, contract number, start, term, renewal, notice period and last day for giving notice. Add two columns that are typically missing: who inside the company is the contracting party, and where the access credentials are kept.
There are usually three sources for these details: the contract itself, the latest invoice and the customer account with the provider. Where they contradict each other, the contract governs. Where the contract is missing, the invoice is a good starting point — it names the service period and the contract number and can be used to request the contract text from the provider. If you are not certain who actually owns the domain, the content and the access credentials, settle that first; the questions are set out in our article who owns your website.
- Domain: registered holder, registrar, renewal date, auth code obtainable.
- Hosting: plan, term, renewal rule, notice period, date the contract was concluded.
- Mailboxes: number, storage size, where the messages are held, whether forwarding beyond the contract end was agreed.
- Maintenance and support: scope, response times, rights to the work results, the agreed handover procedure.
- Licences: one line per extension, with the term and the question of what stops without a valid licence.
- Access: registrar, hosting, content management system, analytics, advertising accounts — one responsible person in-house per credential.
Any format that everyone involved can read will do as a place to keep it. The excerpt below shows the same overview in machine-readable form; kept that way, you can set a reminder on it instead of relying on a note in a calendar.
{
"as_of": "2026-09-21",
"items": [
{
"subject": "Domain",
"start": "2019-03-14",
"term_months": 12,
"renewal": "by 12 months",
"notice_months": 1,
"last_day": "2027-02-13",
"owner": "tech@examplebusiness.invalid"
},
{
"subject": "Web hosting",
"start": "2023-01-01",
"term_months": 12,
"renewal": "by 12 months",
"notice_months": 3,
"last_day": "2026-09-30",
"owner": "tech@examplebusiness.invalid"
},
{
"subject": "Maintenance agreement",
"start": "2025-01-01",
"term_months": 24,
"renewal": "open-ended",
"notice_months": 3,
"last_day": "2026-09-30",
"owner": "management@examplebusiness.invalid"
}
]
}Why the date of conclusion belongs in the table
The order when changing provider
A provider change rarely fails at the termination and often fails at the sequence. The mistake that takes the site offline is a familiar one: notice is given first, the migration is planned afterwards, and a gap opens between the contract ending and the new hosting starting. The other way round it works without downtime, because the termination is the last step, not the first, as long as the deadline allows it.
The deadline sets the starting point. Anyone terminating to 31 December with three months' notice has until 30 September to prepare and three months afterwards to execute. Where the preparation time no longer fits, giving notice is still the right move: it ends the renewal, and the migration happens in the three months that follow. If you are using the change to review the technical basis as well, the criteria are on our page about web hosting.
- Finish the inventory and record the earliest deadline in the chain.
- Decide on the new target and set it up: provision hosting, prepare the certificate, create mailboxes.
- Transfer content and database and test them on the new target while the old site stays live.
- Mirror the mailboxes and set up forwarding before the old contract ends.
- Let the termination arrive within the deadline and file the evidence of receipt.
- Move the domain: request the auth code, start the transfer, and switch name resolution only once the new target responds.
- After the change, check forwarding, certificate, outgoing mail and access to the search engine tools.
The migration itself is a topic of its own with its own pitfalls; the procedure including name resolution lead times is in our article on switching provider without downtime. For the contractual side, three checks are enough, and they can be run from the command line before every deadline.
The first line shows whether the domain sits with the expected registrar and when it was last changed. The second shows who receives the email — often a different provider from the one running the website, and therefore a separate contract with a separate deadline. The third shows how long the certificate still runs. Three commands, three contracts that otherwise tend to be overlooked. How email reliably arrives again after a migration is covered in our article on SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
The handover belongs in the termination letter
If you sell subscriptions yourself: the cancellation button
The second half of the topic concerns companies that conclude continuing obligations with consumers through their own website: a subscription, a membership, a maintenance package, a delivery service. Section 312k BGB applies to them. Where a trader enables consumers to conclude a contract on a continuing obligation through a website, and that contract obliges the trader to provide a service for payment, the same website must also provide a cancellation button.
The statute describes it precisely. The button must be clearly legible and labelled with nothing other than the words “Verträge hier kündigen” (“terminate contracts here”) or a correspondingly unambiguous wording, and must lead directly to a confirmation page. There the consumer states the type of termination — and the reason for it only where the termination is extraordinary — together with their identification, the designation of the contract and the point in time at which it should end; the process is completed with a confirmation button. Buttons and confirmation page must be permanently available as well as directly and easily accessible. Where they are not, the consumer may terminate the contract at any time and without observing a notice period (section 312k(6) BGB).
- The button is reachable from every page, not only from the logged-in customer account.
- The label reads “Verträge hier kündigen” or something correspondingly unambiguous, with no promotional addition.
- The confirmation page requires no login and no details beyond those listed in section 312k(2) BGB.
- The declaration submitted can be stored with date and time (section 312k(3) BGB).
- Receipt is confirmed immediately in text form by electronic means (section 312k(4) BGB).
- Without a stated end date, the termination takes effect at the earliest possible point in time in case of doubt (section 312k(5) BGB).
The statute names two exceptions itself: contracts for whose termination the law prescribes exclusively a form stricter than text form, and websites or contracts concerning financial services. For everything else the rule is simple: if you let people sign up online, you let them cancel online. Technically this is manageable — a form, a confirmation page, an automatic acknowledgement — and it belongs in the same rhythm as the other mandatory information and updates that we describe under website care.
What belongs in your own quote from now on
Once you have sorted out your own contracts, you read other people's quotes differently. Three details decide whether a quote is comparable at all: the term, the renewal rule and the notice period. If one of them is missing, the price is not a basis for comparison but a number without a reference. A monthly price with a 24-month commitment and a monthly price with a monthly cancellation option are two different products. Which services belong together, and in what scope, is set out in our service overview.
Two more details are rarer in quotes and weigh more in a dispute: who owns the work results, and what happens to data and access credentials when the contract ends. And for the worst case there is a route that need not appear in any contract: under section 314(1) BGB either party may terminate a continuing obligation for good cause without observing a notice period where continuing until the agreed end cannot reasonably be expected of them. In the case of a breach of duty, however, that is only permitted after a period set for remedy or a warning has passed without success (section 314(2) BGB), and only within a reasonable period after learning of the reason for termination (section 314(3) BGB). Sluggish response times on their own typically do not carry such a termination.
A long term is not a drawback, an unclear one is
The practical return on all this sorting shows up not in September but in January: the contracts that should continue are continuing, the ones that should have ended are ended, and the website runs throughout. For the technical side of that continuity, the article on website maintenance is the natural neighbour, and how dependable a backup really is is settled by the article on the restore test.
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