It happens to roughly 1 in 4 founders we hear from. The freelancer was great in week one, sketchy in week three, silent in week six. The deposit is gone, the launch date is here, the work isn't.
The 10-day recovery model
Forget chasing the original dev. The fastest path to a live site is to start the clock on a new build, in parallel. Here's how that looks:
- Day 0: Send a one-paragraph brief to a new studio. Forward what assets you have — copy, brand, screenshots of the old work, any code you can salvage.
- Day 1–2: New studio sharpens messaging, sends a flat quote and 10-day plan.
- Day 3–5: Design, in the new direction. Old work used as a reference, not a foundation.
- Day 6–8: Code. Hand-built, deployed to staging.
- Day 9–10: Polish, SEO, launch on your domain. Domain transfer handled by you with the new studio guiding.
Reality check: rebuilding from scratch is almost always faster than salvaging a half-finished, badly-coded site. Sunk cost is the most expensive emotion in software.
Recover your accounts first
Before the new build starts, claim ownership of:
- Domain registrar. If it's in their name, dispute ownership with the registrar.
- Hosting. Most providers (Vercel, Netlify, GitHub) have account-recovery flows with proof of payment.
- Analytics. Re-create your GA4 property under your own Google account.
- Code. If they pushed to GitHub, you may already have access via the repo. Fork it before they delete.
The three founder rules to avoid round two
- Milestone payments. 50% start, 50% on launch. Never 100% upfront.
- You own everything. Domain, hosting, repo, analytics all in your own accounts from day one.
- Hire on portfolio, not promises. Three live URLs you can open right now.
If you're staring at an unfinished build and a hard deadline, send us what you have. We've inherited a dozen of these. All shipped in 10 days or less.