What Happens When Your Kit Digital Ends: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide

The Day After: When the Subsidy Stops

First, a quick primer. Kit Digital is a Spanish government program — funded by the EU’s NextGenerationEU recovery plan — that gave small businesses and freelancers up to €12,000 in subsidies to digitalize. Thousands of businesses used it to get their first professional website, usually built with WordPress by an approved “Digital Agent” (Agente Digitalizador). The deal included 12 months of maintenance and hosting.

Monday morning. You open your inbox. An email from your web provider informs you that your Kit Digital service period has ended. From today, maintenance, hosting, and updates are no longer covered.

Now what?

You’re not alone. Thousands of freelancers and SMBs across Spain are in the exact same situation. They got their website through the subsidy, and for 12 months someone made sure it kept running. That someone is gone now.

What most people don’t realize is that “someone” doesn’t just vanish without consequences. Kit Digital covered a minimum 12-month service period. Once that’s done, full technical and financial responsibility falls back on you. The beneficiary. One hundred percent.

It’s not a disaster. It’s a transition. But if you don’t manage it properly, your website can turn into a storefront with the lights off on a busy Saturday afternoon.

Website Ownership: Is It Actually Yours?

This is the question that keeps business owners up at night. You paid with the subsidy, but who owns the website?

The short answer: you do.

According to the regulatory framework of the Kit Digital program (Order ETD/1498/2021, published in Spain’s Official Gazette — BOE), the beneficiary holds ownership of all digital assets created with the subsidy. This includes the source code, the design, the content, and the associated domain.

But legal ownership is one thing. Having the keys to your house is another.

There are three sets of credentials you must have in your possession before your agreement with the Digital Agent expires:

• Website admin panel. Username and password with an administrator role. Not editor, not contributor. Administrator. If you’re on WordPress, this means full access to the WordPress dashboard.
• Domain control. Check with your domain registrar (Nominalia, GoDaddy, Arsys, Ionos) that the domain is registered under your name. Not your provider’s name. Not the agency’s name. Yours — with your tax ID (DNI or CIF).
• Source code and database. You’re entitled to a complete copy of your website’s files and its database. If your provider won’t hand them over, you’re losing an asset that legally belongs to you.

I see it all the time: a business wants to change something on their website and discovers they don’t even have login credentials. The domain is registered under the agency’s name. And the agency hasn’t answered the phone in three months.

Request your access credentials today. Not tomorrow. Not “when you need them.” Today.

3 Legal Obligations You Cannot Ignore

Kit Digital isn’t free money. It’s a public subsidy with conditions. Failing to comply can mean returning part or all of the grant.

According to the compliance guidelines from Acelera PYME and Red.es, beneficiaries are required to keep the digital solution operational during the service period (minimum 12 months) and to meet the publicity and accessibility obligations set out in the program’s terms.

Three points you cannot overlook:

1. Keep Your Website Active and Functional

Your website must remain operational for the entire period specified in the service agreement. If it goes down before your case is formally closed, you have a problem. And it’s not just technical — it’s administrative.

This doesn’t mean you have to keep it exactly the same forever. It means it can’t “disappear” during the obligation period.

2. Institutional Logo Visibility

Your website must display the logos of Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, the European Union (NextGenerationEU), and the relevant Ministry. Most providers placed them in the footer. If someone removes them for aesthetic reasons before the case is formally closed, you’re in breach.

Check your footer right now. Are they still there? Good. Don’t touch them until Red.es formally closes your file.

3. Web Accessibility

Digital solutions funded with EU money must meet basic web accessibility standards (WCAG). Nobody’s going to demand a WCAG AAA audit, but your site does need to be navigable, text needs to be readable, and forms need to be accessible.

If your site was built with a WordPress template loaded with animations and no alt text on the images, you could have a problem if inspected. The odds are low, but the risk exists.

The Technical Risk: What Nobody Tells You About End of Support

This is where most businesses get caught off guard. Kit Digital covered maintenance. Now that it’s over, who updates the plugins? Who renews the hosting? Who pays for the domain?

Your website doesn’t maintain itself. Especially if it runs on WordPress.

A WordPress site without maintenance is what the industry calls an orphaned website: plugins left unpatched for months, an outdated theme with known vulnerabilities, an SSL certificate that expires with nobody to renew it, and hosting that stops getting paid because the previous provider had it bundled into their service.

The outcome is predictable. First it slows down. Then errors start popping up. Then Google flags it as “not secure.” And one day, it simply stops loading.

I’ve seen businesses lose months of Google rankings because nobody renewed the hosting when Kit Digital ended. The website was down for 11 days. Eleven. To Google, that’s a signal of abandonment.

And the domain is even more critical. If your domain expires and you don’t renew it within the first 30–60 days, anyone can register it. Imagine someone buys yourbusiness.es and redirects it to your competitor. It’s not science fiction — it happens.

---

Not sure about the technical state of your Kit Digital website? You can request a free technical assessment. No strings attached, no fine print — just a clear report on what’s working and what needs attention.

Request your free assessment → itsgenki.com/wordpress-kit-digital

---

Your Action Plan: What to Do This Week

Don’t wait for something to break. These are the steps you can take this very week to take control of your digital asset.

Step 1: Request all access credentials. Website admin, hosting panel, database credentials, domain registrar login. In writing. Store them in a password manager, not on a sticky note on your monitor.

Step 2: Verify domain ownership. Log into your registrar (or look up your domain on who.is) and confirm the registrant is you or your company. If the agency’s name appears, request the transfer now. Not next week.

Step 3: Assess the technical state of your website. How many plugins does it have? Are they up to date? Is the SSL certificate valid? When does the hosting expire? And the domain? These questions sound technical, but the answers are money.

Step 4: Decide on a continuity plan. You have three real options:

• Manage it yourself. Viable if you have technical knowledge and time. WordPress requires 2 to 4 hours of minimum maintenance per month.
• Hire professional maintenance. The most sensible option for most businesses. A technical team handles updates, security, backups, and performance for a fixed monthly fee.
• Migrate to modern technology. If your WordPress site has accumulated problems and performance is poor, it might be time to build on new foundations. Faster, more secure, without the technical debt of plugins.

Step 5: Don’t let another month slip by. Every week without maintenance is a week of vulnerabilities piling up. The cost of prevention is always lower than the cost of repair.

Time to Take Control

The Kit Digital program has been a great initiative. Thousands of businesses that had no online presence now have one. That has real value. The problem isn’t the subsidy — it’s the lack of technical continuity afterward.

At It’s Genki, based in Valencia, we offer free technical assessments for websites left without support after Kit Digital. And for those who need ongoing continuity, our Peace of Mind Plan starts at €59/month + VAT.

Explore professional maintenance options for Kit Digital websites → itsgenki.com/wordpress-kit-digital