Recovery guide
Your freelancer disappeared. Here's how to recover your project.
This situation is far more common than you think, and it is not a sign that you were careless. Fast, inexpensive builds quietly trade away account ownership — you only discover it when the replies stop. Here is what to do next.
Before you hire the next cheap freelancer on the same platform
The instinct to immediately repost the job at a lower price is understandable — and it is exactly how this happens twice.
The same trap, twice
A second low-bid hire inherits the same incentives: deliver fast, document nothing, move on. Without an assessment first, you are buying the same risk again.
The race to the bottom
Open bidding rewards whoever quotes lowest and fastest, not whoever actually read your code. Rescue work needs the opposite selection process.
Nobody has read your system
Any quote given before reading the code is a guess. A fixed-price assessment replaces guessing with a written verdict you can act on.
The 72-hour recovery list — the short version
Do these five things first, in this order. The full 12-step checklist lives on the emergency checklist page.
- 1
Secure your domain
Log into the registrar, renew the domain, and make sure the account email and payment method are yours — not the developer's.
- 2
Take over hosting and servers
Regain admin access to the hosting account, or at minimum confirm you can keep paying the bills so nothing gets deleted.
- 3
Get the source code
Ask for the repository to be transferred to an account you own. If there is no reply, download whatever is deployed as a fallback.
- 4
Secure payment flows
Payment gateways, subscription billing, payout accounts — move them under credentials you control before touching anything else.
- 5
List third-party keys
Inventory every API key and third-party service the system uses, and rotate anything the departed developer still holds.
The takeover assessment
How the takeover assessment works
Instead of quoting blind, a vetted expert reads your system first and writes down what they find — so every decision after that is based on facts, not hope.
- Fixed price, agreed before work starts — no hourly ambiguity.
- Delivered in 3–5 business days.
- A written verdict: what exists, what is at risk, what it costs to stabilize — including an honest 'rewrite it' if that is the truth.
There is no obligation to continue past the assessment. The report is yours either way.
Which situation are you in?
My app was vibe-coded
Built fast with AI tools and now nobody can change it safely. We stabilize AI-generated systems.
Read the guideThere's no documentation
No handover, no notes, no developer. We reverse-engineer the system and write the Handover Pack.
Read the guideI need the emergency checklist
The 12-step, 72-hour checklist to secure your domain, hosting, code and payments — free PDF.
Read the guideCommon questions
What if the developer never replies at all?
Then Phase 1 includes recovery work: mapping what exists, pulling what is deployed, and regaining account access wherever the providers allow it. Anything truly unrecoverable is scoped explicitly as a reduction and quoted separately.
Was it my fault for choosing the cheapest quote?
No. Fast, low-cost delivery is a legitimate trade-off — the problem is that its costs (no docs, no ownership, no maintenance path) are invisible until the developer leaves. The fix is structural, not personal.
Will I have to rebuild everything from scratch?
Usually not. Most abandoned systems can be stabilized and maintained. If the assessment concludes a rewrite is cheaper than patching, we will say so in writing, with the reasoning.
How much does the assessment cost?
It is a fixed quote based on system size, agreed before any work begins. Post the project and you will see the price before you commit.
Get a written verdict before you spend on fixes
Post a takeover assessment and receive a fixed-price evaluation within 3–5 business days. No obligation to continue past Phase 1.