Your own contract decides this, not a consumer law. Find the renewal clause, count backward from the renewal date to your notice deadline, and send written notice before that deadline passes. The auto renewal laws people read about are written around the word consumer, and a business buying marketing services is usually not one.
Find the two dates before you do anything else
Two dates run this. The renewal date, and the notice deadline.
The renewal date is when the current term ends and the next one starts. The notice deadline is that date minus the notice period written into the agreement. Thirty, sixty and ninety days are all common.
Pull the signed contract and read the renewal clause word for word. Four things decide your move:
- The length of the term, and whether it renews for the same length.
- How many days of notice you owe, and whether those are calendar days or business days.
- How notice must be sent. Some contracts name certified mail and will not accept an email.
- Where it goes. Often a named officer at a street address, not your account manager.
If you cannot find the contract, ask for a signed copy in writing today. A company that will not produce the document it wants to enforce has told you something.
The consumer laws you have read about probably do not cover you
Search this topic and you land on click to cancel. That rule is gone.
On 8 July 2025 the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit filed its decision in Custom Communications, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission, No. 24-3137, and vacated the FTC’s amended Negative Option Rule in full. The court granted the petitions for review after finding the Commission skipped a preliminary regulatory analysis required by section 22 of the FTC Act, once an administrative law judge found the rule would have an annual effect on the national economy of $100 million or more. The cancellation piece everybody wrote about, a simple mechanism at least as easy to use as the sign up, never reached its compliance date. The Commission had already pushed that deadline to 14 July 2025, six days after the court vacated the rule.
The federal statute still standing turns on one word. The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, at 15 U.S.C. 8403, makes it unlawful to charge “any consumer” through a negative option feature online. The Office of the Law Revision Counsel page credits that section to Public Law 111-345, dated 29 December 2010.
State law draws the same line. California Business and Professions Code section 17601 defines a consumer as “any individual who seeks or acquires, by purchase or lease, any goods, services, money, or credit for personal, family, or household purposes.” That page shows the section amended by Stats. 2024, Ch. 515, Sec. 1, effective 1 January 2025. A plumbing company buying a website is not an individual buying for household purposes.
This is not legal advice. Contract law is state law, and your own wording changes the answer, so put the actual document in front of an attorney in your state before you rely on any of it.
Two states wrote rules for business contracts, and both have narrow edges
Wisconsin has one aimed squarely at businesses. Section 134.49(3) says that if a business contract with an initial term of more than one year renews for an additional term of more than one year, the seller has to give you written notice at least 15 days and not more than 60 days before your deadline to decline. Miss that, and the renewal provision is not enforceable against you. The Wisconsin Legislature page carries the 2023-24 statutes updated through 2025 Wis. Act 247, in effect on 5 August 2026.
Here is the catch that will disappoint most readers. A one year term renewing for one year is not more than one year. The ordinary twelve month website contract sits outside that statute entirely.
New York’s version lives in General Obligations Law 5-903 and never uses the word consumer at all. It covers contracts for service, maintenance or repair to or for real or personal property, and it makes an auto renewal unenforceable unless the provider gave written notice, in person or by certified mail, at least fifteen and not more than thirty days before your notice deadline. Renewal periods of one month or less are excluded. The New York State Senate page shows a last revision of 22 September 2014.
Whether a website counts as service to real or personal property is not settled by the text on its face. This is not legal advice either. That argument belongs to a lawyer licensed in your state, not to a checklist on a website.
Send the notice so you can prove you sent it
Match the method the contract names first. Then send a second copy by email so a timestamp exists either way.
Certified mail appears in both statutes above, and it gives you a signature record. New York allows only personal service or certified mail, while Wisconsin’s subsection (4) lists registered or certified mail among several permitted methods. If your contract says notice is effective on receipt rather than on mailing, send it early enough that delivery lands inside the window.
Keep the notice short. Name the agreement, the date signed, the account number, and one sentence saying this is written notice that the agreement will not renew and ends at the close of the current term on a stated date. Ask for written acknowledgment.
File the mailing receipt, the signature record and any reply together. If a dispute comes later, that folder is the whole argument.
Do not cancel the card first
Killing the card before the notice lands turns a clean exit into a collections file. The charge stops, the contract does not, and the balance for the term you agreed to is still owed, the same way it is in a no money down website deal. What happens next to the site, the hosting and the listings is a separate question, covered in what happens if you stop paying.
There is also an honest case for not cancelling at all this month. If the notice deadline has already gone by and the renewal is locked for another year, the cheaper move is often to serve notice now for the next renewal and keep using what you are already paying for. Buying a replacement in month two of a term you still owe means paying twice for the same year.
One more limit worth naming. Cancelling stops the bill. It does not by itself move a domain, a hosting account or a Google listing into your name, and a site handed over free by a lead generation company usually comes with its own strings, which is its own topic.
What to do this week
- Find the signed contract. If you cannot, request a copy in writing today.
- Put both dates on a calendar, the renewal date and the notice deadline.
- Send notice by the method the contract names, and copy it by email.
- Ask for written acknowledgment and keep every receipt in one place.
- Ask an attorney in your state to read the clause if real money is on the line.
Before signing the next one, ask for three lines on top of everything else a quote should list: a notice period of 30 days or less, month to month billing after the first term, and your domain and accounts registered in your own business name. A contract you can walk away from in thirty days is worth more than a discount on one you cannot. What actually gets built and who holds the accounts is set out on the websites page, and the monthly plans are listed on pricing.