Answers

Give Your Agency Granted Access, Never Your Logins

Grant your agency delegated access through each platform's own permission system. Do not hand over your usernames and passwords. When an agency signs in as you, you lose the audit trail, you weaken two-factor authentication, and you cannot remove one person without resetting every credential. Granted access keeps you the account owner and lets you revoke the agency with a single action the day you decide to move on.

The real question, should my agency have my logins or should I grant access, has one answer in any serious shop: grant access. A login is a copied key that turns someone into you. Granted access is a badge the platform can see and you can deactivate. That one difference decides how safe you are and how cleanly you can leave.

A shared login and granted access are not the same thing

A shared login is a password. Whoever holds it becomes you, with the same permissions and the same blind spot, and the platform keeps no record of who did what. Granted access is a role. The platform treats the agency as a separate party, logs their actions under their own identity, and lets you scope exactly what they can touch. One is a key you copied. The other is access you can switch off.

What granted access looks like on each platform

Almost every tool a marketing agency touches already supports delegated access. You add the agency as a user or partner, assign the level the work needs, and keep the owner seat for yourself.

• Google Analytics and Search Console: add the agency's own account as a user at the access level the work requires, and keep the administrator or owner role yourself.
• Google Business Profile: invite the agency as a Manager. You stay the Primary Owner, which is the only role that can add or remove other people.
• Google Ads: link through a manager account rather than sharing one sign in, so billing and ownership stay in your name.
• Meta Business Manager: your business owns the ad account and the page, and you assign the agency as a partner with task level permissions. Never let an agency run your ads on assets they created under their own Business Manager.
• Domain registrar and DNS: keep the registrar account in your name and grant delegate or user access. The domain is the one asset that should never live inside someone else's login.
• Hosting and CMS: create a separate admin or editor user for the agency instead of sharing the master account.

The pattern is the same everywhere. The owner seat is yours, the agency gets a working seat, and the two are never the same account.

Owner, admin, and working roles are different jobs

Delegating does not mean demoting yourself. The owner or primary role is the one that can add and remove everyone else, change billing, and recover the account. Keep it. Hand the agency an editor or manager role that is strong enough to do the work and limited enough that losing them never locks you out. If a platform only offers owner and nothing lower, add the agency as a second owner you can remove, not as a replacement for you.

Why shared logins are a security problem, not a convenience

Sharing a password quietly disables the controls meant to protect the account. Two-factor authentication assumes one human holds the second factor. The moment two parties share one login, the code goes to one phone while the other person is either locked out or passing codes around, which is the exact behavior attackers count on.

You also lose attribution. If a tracking tag vanishes or a page is deleted, a shared login shows that the account did it, never who. With granted access, every change is tied to a named identity you can review and, if it comes to it, hold accountable.

And you lose clean offboarding. When the relationship ends, revoking granted access is one action per platform. Unwinding a shared password means resetting it everywhere it was reused, hoping it was never saved in a browser, and trusting that nobody kept a copy. That is the difference between closing a door and changing every lock in the building.

How we handle access

We ask for granted access on the first day and we write it down. You create the owner seats, you invite us into the roles the work needs, and the list of what we can touch lives in your scope of work so nothing is vague. If we build your site, the hosting and the domain sit under your own accounts, and we operate inside them as a delegated user.

This is also why the arrangement is simple to leave. Because we never hold your passwords, ending the engagement is not a scramble: you remove our access and keep every account, asset, and login exactly as it was. For how the retainer itself is structured and what it covers, the services and pricing pages spell it out.

If an agency insists on your passwords, ask why

A capable agency defaults to granted access because it is standard practice and it protects both sides. When someone pushes to hold your logins, or resists handing you the owner seat, treat it as information. The usual reasons are leverage if you try to leave, or work built inside their own accounts so it cannot transfer to you. Neither is in your interest.