Your developer disappeared. What now?

Your developer has stopped replying to your emails. That can have many causes, from illness to a business that closed, and you do not need to know which to move forward. Software that runs today usually keeps running, even if nobody looks at it for a while. So you normally have time to do this in the right order: first regain your access, then see what exists, then get someone to look at it.

Send a clear message

First send a friendly email listing what you need. Add a message through another channel, such as text or LinkedIn, because that person may no longer check that mailbox. You might write:

I would like access to everything around our software myself, so it can keep running. Could you let me know where the domain name, the hosting and the code are, and give me access to them? A list of the other services we use would help too.

Leave blame out of it. You do not know what is going on at the other end, and a friendly question makes replying easier. If no answer comes, simply carry on with what follows. You can also do that while you wait.

Regain your access

Start in your own mailbox and your bookkeeping. Search for invoices, welcome emails and password emails from hosting companies and other services. Keep a list with, per service, the name, whose name it is in, who can log in, who pays and when it renews.

Let everything keep running for now. Do not cancel anything until you know what a service does, because your site or app may depend on it.

The main parts are these:

• The domain name. That is your address on the web, registered with a company that sells domains. For a .be address you can look up which company it is registered with at DNS Belgium. Check straight away when the name has to be renewed. If it is in your company’s name, the seller can normally help you regain access, with proof that you represent your company.
• The hosting. That is the place your site or app runs. An invoice, or a technical person looking up your domain name, can tell you where that is. If you pay the bill, customer service can often help you further. If your developer pays, that is harder, but ask anyway.
• The code. It usually sits in a repository, an online place for the code and all its changes, with services such as GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket. Search your email for invitations. If you have access, make a copy straight away.
• The app store accounts. Apple and Google work with developer accounts. If your app is on your own company’s account, try to become its administrator again. If it is on the developer’s account, it normally has to be transferred, and that usually starts with the current owner. If that does not work, contact Apple or Google customer support. Their rules change, so check what applies today.
• The other services. Think of payments, sending email, the database, maps, AI services and statistics. Your bank statements and credit card bills often show services that turn up nowhere else.

Once you are back in somewhere, change the password and turn on two-step verification, the extra code when logging in. Use an email address from your company and add a second administrator. Wait to remove your former developer’s access until someone has checked that nothing depends on it, such as a key on their account that lets your app talk to another service.

If a part stays out of reach, look in your contract or your emails at what was agreed. With a freelancer, the copyright on the code can stay with the maker unless a contract says otherwise. A lawyer can look at what that means for you. Who owns your code and data? explains how that works.

See what exists

You need no technical knowledge for this. Open your site or app as a customer would and go through the main tasks. Write down what works, what does not, and what was promised but never finished. Note too which people rely on it every day.

Then gather all the paperwork: the contract, the quote, old plans, feature lists and emails about changes. If there is documentation with the code, the explanation of how everything works, take that too. Ask as well whether there are backups of your data and where they are. If a backup has never been restored, you do not know whether it works, so put that on your list of questions for the next step.

Get someone to look at it

Ask another developer only to assess what exists, and agree that you get the result in writing. Give that person your list of accounts and your notes. These are good questions:

• Can you get the code running on your own computer, and put a small change online?
• Is anything urgent, such as an outdated part with a known security problem or something that expires soon?
• How clear is the code, and are there automated tests?
• What would you do first, and why?

If the advice is to rebuild something, ask how that compares with continuing on what exists. It depends on the product and on what you want to do with it, and you are entitled to have it explained in plain language. You do not have to decide the same day, and a second opinion is always allowed. If a lot has to be redone, What goes in a first version? helps you choose what comes first.

What to record now

Your list of accounts is now also a piece of documentation: which services you use, whose name they are in and where everything is. Keep it up to date and ask whoever carries on to add to it, with how to put a change online and what to do during an outage.

Agree with your next developer straight away what a handover would look like. My process page says how I do it: I stay around, or I hand it over cleanly with documentation the next developer can use. Your domain name, your hosting and your app store accounts can be in your own company’s name, even if someone else manages them.