When the last developer disappeared
Find out what your app needs before anyone rebuilds it
The app is live, users are in it, and the people who built it stopped answering. Reviews mention bugs, updates stopped months ago, and you're not sure what you own. App / Product Rescue is a full technical assessment of what exists, finished in 10 days, with a written fix plan and a quote you can take to us or to anyone else.
What you get
What’s included
Codebase review
Code quality, architecture, dependencies, and how far the app has fallen behind on libraries and OS versions.
Infrastructure check
Servers, databases and third-party services: what's running, what it's costing you, and what's close to failing.
Accounts and access audit
Who holds the App Store, Google Play, cloud, domain and code repository accounts, and what you need to get back.
What's broken and what's worth keeping
Crashes, data-loss risks and the bugs your reviews keep mentioning, sorted by severity, next to the parts that work and should stay.
Written fix plan
What to stabilize first, what to finish, and which modules, if any, should be rebuilt, in priority order.
A quote for the work
A fixed quote for carrying out the plan. You can execute it with us, with another team, or in house.
A good fit if
- Fitness, wellness and health app owners whose agency or freelancer went quiet
- Apps with a growing pile of bug complaints in store reviews
- Founders who've been quoted a full rebuild and want a second opinion first
- Teams that can't say who holds the store accounts, servers or source code
Not included
- The fixes themselves, which are quoted in the fix plan
- Rebuilding the app. The assessment tells you whether you need to
- Legal action or negotiation with your previous developer
- Ongoing maintenance, available afterwards as a monthly retainer
How it runs
From kickoff to handover
- Step 1
Access and inventory
You share whatever access you have. We list every account, repository, server and service the app depends on, and flag what's missing.
- Step 2
Assessment
We work through the code, infrastructure, dependencies, crash reports and store reviews to separate what's broken from what's fine.
- Step 3
Fix plan and quote
Within the 10 days you get the written plan and a quote, and we go through both with you.
- Step 4
You decide what happens next
We stabilize and maintain it, another team does, or you rebuild. The assessment is yours either way.
Questions
Questions about App rescue
We don't have all the logins or the source code. Can you still assess it?
Yes. Finding out what's missing is part of the job. The access audit lists what you hold, what someone else holds and what needs to be recovered. If the source code is gone, the plan says so and sets out the options.
Are you just going to tell us to rebuild it?
Only if that's the cheaper path. When an app still works well enough to have users, fixing it usually costs less than a rewrite, and we'll say so even when a rebuild would bill better. Sometimes the verdict is 'finish this', sometimes it's 'rebuild these two modules'.
What happens after the 10 days?
You hold a fix plan and a quote. If you hire us, we stabilize first: crashes, data loss and the bugs your reviews mention, fixed in priority order against the plan. After that, a maintenance retainer keeps the app monitored, patched and shipping.
What technologies can you take over?
Native iOS, native Android, Flutter and React Native apps, and the backends behind them. If your app is built on something we can't maintain well, the assessment flags it.
Is the assessment useful if someone else does the fixing?
Yes. It's written so another team can pick it up: what exists, what's wrong, and the order to fix it in.
More from Apps & Custom Software
Keep exploring
Often paired with this
Work with us
Ready to start App rescue?
Tell us about your business. We'll confirm the scope and send you a start date.