Owning Your Content: The Myth of Platform Security

For years, I’ve been repeating the same advice to my clients and students.

“Use open-source platforms so you own your content.”

​Open-source software is free to use, usually run by a non-profit group of developers from all over the world who work together to build a useful tool that they love. These are passion projects and the folks who contribute to them are passionate about what they’re building. With these types of tools, you usually “rent” space on a big computer (hosting server) and then put the software on yourself. You then may change that software so that it runs the way you want it to.

I’ve built these systems for decades, and they’ve served my clients well. You don’t outgrow one of these websites very often.

Here’s a second piece of advice that I’ve given often:

“Don’t trust SaaS (Service as a Subscription) platforms like Wix, Shopify, or Squarespace because if something goes wrong, you might lose everything.”

​ Service as a Subscription is a situation where you pay a company to provide you a thing. When we stream Netflix, we’re using SaaS. As long as we keep paying Netflix, we can keep binge watching our favorite videos. But if the powers that be remove an episode, we have no control. That’s just how SaaS works.

Stop paying? No more Netflix and chill.​​

Or in the website world, if you stop paying your service provider, no more website.

It’s a comforting thought—the idea that by choosing WordPress or another self-hosted solution, you’re securing your digital presence. That you’re safe.

But after the recent WordPress drama and watching countless authors struggle with platform upheavals, I’m questioning that mantra.

Because here’s the hard truth: no online tool is truly safe.

The Reality of Content Ownership

For years, we’ve been told that self-hosted platforms are better because they give you full control. Theoretically, that’s true. If you self-host, you can export your database, make backups, and move your site wherever you want.

But in practice? That assumes a level of diligence that most people don’t follow through with.

A client had a bad financial month just as their hosting came due. They decided to eat that month and pay their hosting the next month. Once they went to pay, they discovered the website was gone.

A student’s credit card was stolen, so the bank put a freeze on it. The client forgot to give the domain name registrar their new card number. Worse, they’d changed email addresses and forgot that the registrar had the old one. By the time they noticed their website was down, someone had bought their domain name and it would take $4000 to get it back. They had to start over with a new domain name.

I could tell you hundreds of stories like these.

I’ve seen plenty of authors lose everything—not because their platform disappeared, but because they forgot to pay for their hosting or let their domain name expire. They email me asking for help, but there’s nothing I can do. The website is gone. The best option we have is to rebuild from the Internet Archive.

It turns out, losing your website because you didn’t renew a subscription on Shopify… looks a lot like losing your website because you forgot to pay your hosting company.

What Really Matters: Backups & Portability

The real question isn’t where your content lives. It’s whether you can get it out when you need to.

What is content, really?

Your words. Your blog posts. Your email list.

Not the platform. Not the design. Those things are tools, but your actual content should be portable.

No matter what platform you use—SaaS or self-hosted—you need to have backups stored outside of that system. Whether it’s a home computer, cloud storage, or even a good old-fashioned text file, having a copy that isn’t locked inside a specific system is the only real way to own your content.

Website content is weird. Backups from different platforms aren’t always useful if you want to move to another platform. Storing copies of blog posts in a document on your computer may feel old-school, but it works.

And let’s not forget the heart of our websites: our email list! Depending on how active you are, copy those lists somewhere else every month or two, storing them in a spreadsheet format of some sort. If anything goes wrong, you want to have those all important email addresses. (Note: DO make sure your export respects the privacy of people who have unsubscribed.)

Choosing a Platform in an Unstable World

Given the way things are shifting, what should authors look for in a platform?

Here’s what I focus on:

• Cost: Is it affordable, or will it price you out over time?

• Extensibility: Can you grow with it, or will you have to start over later?

• Ease of Use: Can you actually work with it, or will it be a constant struggle?

• And most importantly: Can you back up your content and move if you need to?

If the answer is yes, then it doesn’t matter what the platform is. What matters is that it does what you need it to and that you’re not trapped.

The Big Picture

It’s time to rethink the conversation around platform ownership. The truth is, we don’t own platforms—we rent them. Whether it’s a SaaS product or a self-hosted solution, there are always outside forces at play: updates, security risks, pricing changes, even domain renewals.

What we can own is our content.

By keeping independent backups, we stop tying our identity to a single platform. We give ourselves the flexibility to adapt when the tech landscape shifts.

Because in this era of constant upheaval, the ability to move is more important than the illusion of control.

What do you think? Have you ever lost content because of a platform change—or a simple mistake?