If your developer has stopped responding, here is the short version:
do not panic, do not pay anyone who promises to fix everything before they have seen what exists, and spend the next 48 hours gathering and securing everything you already have access to.
Most founders in this situation can recover more than they fear.
What you can recover depends almost entirely on which accounts are in your name.
We work with founders in exactly this position. This is the playbook we walk them through.
Before you escalate, rule out the boring explanations.
Solo developers get sick. Small agencies lose staff.
Send one clear, dated message: “I need a response within 5 business days or I will treat this engagement as abandoned and act accordingly.”
Send it by email so you have a record.
If five business days pass in silence, proceed as if they are gone.
You can always de-escalate later.
You cannot get back the weeks lost waiting politely.
Gather every artifact of the project into one folder.
You are building two things at once:
a recovery kit for whoever helps you next, and an evidence file in case this becomes a legal matter.
Collect these, in this order of importance:
What you can and cannot recover
Be realistic about this part, because plenty of firms are not.
Best case: you have the repository.
You have the source code.
Recovery is mostly a new team reading the code and picking up where things stopped.
Harder: you only have the deployed app.
A running app is not the same as its source code, and no one can pull source code out of thin air.
Some things can be reconstructed: the design, the features, the database structure if you control the hosting account.
But rebuilding the underlying code means redoing real work.
Anyone who promises otherwise before examining what exists is guessing, or selling.
Worst case: you have neither.
You are starting over, but not from zero.
You have a validated spec: you know exactly what the app was supposed to do, what you would change, and what it cost the first time.
Founders consistently build better, leaner second versions.
We are developers, not lawyers, so treat this as orientation, not legal advice.
The most expensive mistake at this stage is hiring the next team on fear.
Founders who have been burned tend to either freeze for months or leap at the first firm that sounds confident.
Both cost you.
Before committing to anyone, get an independent review of what you actually have: what the recovered code is worth, what is salvageable, and what a realistic path to launch looks like. This is the core of what a software project rescue involves.
The first conversation should cost you nothing.
The detailed code review is paid work, and an honest firm will quote it before starting, not after.
One of our rescue clients spent $150,000 over 12 months before asking for a second opinion.
The review found no security, no compliance, and features that did not work.
The lesson she would give you: the second opinion is free, and the wrong developer already cost you plenty.
When you do hire again, three contract terms prevent a repeat:
Our free 14 Questions checklist covers the rest of what to ask before signing.
Can GitHub or my hosting company give me the code if the account isn’t mine?
Generally no.
Platforms will not transfer a private repository or account to you based on a verbal claim of ownership, even with invoices.
They will usually respond to a court order.
This is why account ownership matters more than any contract clause in practice.
The developer says I owe a final payment before they release anything. Do I pay?
Read the contract first.
If it ties IP transfer to final payment and the work was delivered, paying may be the cheapest path to your code.
If the work was not delivered, paying for nothing rarely produces something.
A lawyer’s one-hour review is worth it here.
How much does it cost to recover and restart a project?
It ranges too widely for an honest single number, because it depends on what you recovered.
With full source code access, restarting can cost a fraction of the original build.
With nothing recovered, you are pricing a rebuild.
Our App Cost Calculator replaces the traditional $5,000+ discovery process.
It isn’t free, but we credit the cost back if you decide to build with us.
Should I report the developer somewhere?
If you believe you were defrauded (paid for work that never existed), you can report to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and consider civil action.
If the work existed but the relationship collapsed, it is a contract dispute, not fraud, and the remedies are civil.
Your developer disappearing feels like the end of your project.
Usually it is the messy middle.
If you want a straight answer about what you have and what it will take to finish, our software project rescue starts with a free 30-minute second opinion. No pitch.
We will tell you what we see, even if the answer is “you don’t need us.”
Don’t wait until you’ve spent $150K to get a second opinion.