"A friend built the site and he has stopped replying. What now?" This is one of the most common enquiries we get, and almost everyone who sends it believes they have lost everything. In reality the situation is nearly always recoverable — you just need half an hour to establish what you actually hold. Below is the order of operations we go through with clients, and an honest answer on what it costs.
The short answer
A website is four separate things: the domain, the hosting, the code and the data. They can sit in different places and belong to different people. The panic is usually unnecessary: the most valuable piece is the domain, and it is almost never lost for good. Start by checking whose name it is registered in, and then act on facts rather than guesswork.
Step 1. Work out what you have
Write four lines on paper and mark each one "I have access" or "no idea":
- Domain — the address. Where it was registered, in whose name, when the payment runs out.
- Hosting — the server holding the files. Provider name, control panel login.
- Code and database — the site files themselves and the database with orders and customers.
- Services — analytics, Search Console, domain email, payment provider, maps listing.
Nine times out of ten it turns out that at least the domain is in the client's name — the registrar's emails have simply been going for years to an inbox nobody reads.
Step 2. Check the domain
Ownership data for a domain is public. Open any registrar's site, find the "Whois" or "Domain lookup" section, and enter your address without https://. What to look for in the answer:
- Registrar — the company the domain is registered with. That is who you contact to recover access.
- Registrant — whose name it is in. Often hidden by privacy, but the registrar will confirm it against documents.
- Expiry date — how long it is paid for. This is the most important line: if the date is close, everything else waits.
If the domain is in your name or your company's, access is restored through the registrar's support with documents — usually company registration papers and an ID scan. It takes anywhere from a few hours to a few days.
Step 3. Three typical situations
Situation A: everything is in your name, only the person is missing
The easiest case. You recover access to the mailbox everything was registered with, reset the passwords for the hosting panel and the registrar, and switch on two-factor authentication. The site keeps running throughout and nothing breaks. Then you look for someone to take over maintenance.
Situation B: the domain is registered to the contractor
Unpleasant, but still solvable. First write formally — an email, not a messenger — asking for the domain to be transferred, and give a deadline. Often the person is simply busy with something else and hands it over without argument. If there is no reply, go to the registrar: with a contract, invoices or evidence that the brand is yours, the domain can be reassigned. If the domain matches a registered trade mark, your position is stronger still.
In parallel, protect yourself: make sure the domain is paid well ahead. A domain nobody renews is released and can end up with anyone.
Situation C: the site lives on the contractor's hosting or on a builder under their account
The worst case, because here you can lose the site itself. While you still have access, take a copy immediately: download the files, export the database, save every piece of text and every photo. If access is already gone, some content can be pulled from search engine caches and web archives — awkward, but better than nothing.
A builder site cannot be moved "as is" at all — you take the content out of it and build a new version. We covered that in website builder or custom development.
What not to do
- Do not pay a "ransom" straight away. First establish what the other side is actually holding. Sometimes all they have is an old hosting password, and the domain is yours.
- Do not change DNS by guesswork. One wrong record takes down both the site and the email on that domain. A single mistake turns "the site is not updating" into "the site and the email are both down".
- Do not start a new site on a new domain. This is the most expensive mistake there is: you leave your rankings, your backlinks and your entire history on the old address. Recovering the old domain is almost always cheaper.
- Do not delete the old hosting before you have checked the copy. An archive that will not unpack is not a copy.
What it costs
If you have the access and all you need is a move to decent hosting — from $60, 1–3 days: migration with a backup, domain and SSL setup, and a check that everything still works. That is our normal rate, listed on the pricing page.
If the site has to be rescued piece by piece, we start with a free review and tell you what genuinely survived. Sometimes the conclusion is bleak: restoring costs more than rebuilding. In that case we say so, and rebuild while keeping the address and the rankings.
If the contractor vanished along with the site and there are no copies, it is new development: a landing page from $190 and 7–14 days, a corporate website from $690 and 21–35 days.
How to avoid it happening twice
- Register the domain and hosting in your own name, from your own email. You give the contractor access, not ownership.
- Use a separate company mailbox for services, and make sure the business owner can get into it.
- Two-factor authentication on the mailbox, the registrar and the hosting.
- Put the handover of source code and all credentials into the contract, due on delivery.
- A backup once a week — and preferably not only on the same server.
- Once a year, open whois and look at the domain expiry date.
Frequently asked questions
Can I take back a domain if the contractor will not reply?
Yes, through the registrar. You need evidence of the connection to your business: a contract, invoices, correspondence, a registered trade mark. The procedure is not instant, but it works. The main thing is not to wait until the paid period runs out.
The site works but I have no access at all. Is that urgent?
Yes, even if everything looks fine from outside. A site without credentials is a site you cannot update, cannot restore after a failure and cannot move. It works right up until something happens.
What if the mailbox everything was registered with is lost?
Recovering that mailbox is the root of the whole chain. If it is on a domain you do not control, recovery starts with the domain. If it is an ordinary mail service, go through their standard document-based recovery.
How much does it cost to take a copy of the site "just in case"?
If hosting access exists, it is about an hour of work — from $35 at our hourly rate. Cheaper than any recovery afterwards.
Will I lose search rankings when moving?
Not with a careful move. The critical part is keeping the page addresses and setting redirects from old to new wherever an address changed. Without that you lose most of the organic traffic, and it really is the most common mistake made when changing contractor.
In short
The order is simple: whois, check whose name the domain is in, copy everything you can still reach, recover access through the registrar and the host — and only then decide whether to repair or rebuild.
If you would rather not work through it yourself, send us the address through contacts. We will look at the whois and the state of the site and tell you what you are holding and what to do with it. That is free and commits you to nothing.