Website recovery
Take back control of your website
Your former developer has gone quiet, or nobody knows who holds the domain name, the hosting and the logins. We investigate, tell you who holds what, and show you how to put everything back in your business’s name.
Audit: $750 for one site, $250 per additional site. Credited against a rebuild if you hire us for it.
Sound familiar?
Signs your website isn’t really yours
- Your developer or agency no longer answers.
- You don’t know where your domain is registered, or in whose name.
- Changing a line of text means going through someone else.
- Hosting or licence invoices go to another person.
- Email sent to info@ bounces or disappears.
- You’re selling the business or a building, and the website has to go with it.
The audit
What you get
A written report, site by site, that you can hand to your accountant, your lawyer or your next provider.
The domain name
Whose name it’s registered in, at which registrar, and when it expires.
Hosting and DNS
Where the site actually runs, and who pays for the account.
The platform
WordPress, Webflow, Wix or custom code: its version and known security holes.
Licences and subscriptions
Paid plugins and services tied to someone else’s account.
Email and analytics
Whether your addresses work, and whether visits are still being measured.
The recovery plan
The simplest route in your case, the steps, and the documents to gather.
Recovery
Four ways to get everything back in your name
These are options, not steps. The audit tells you which one to try first.
A cooperative transfer
Your former provider moves the domain and the accounts to yours. GoDaddy, Webflow and Wix each have a tool for it; we tell you exactly what to ask for.
Free · the fastest route
Recovery through the registrar
If the domain is already in your business’s name but the account isn’t, the registrar can give you access back on ID and business documents. It’s the detail the audit checks first.
Free · at the registrar’s pace
A domain name dispute
If the domain is in someone else’s name: CIRA’s CDRP for a .ca, the UDRP for a .com. You need a trademark you already used, and a bad-faith registration. Developers have lost these cases; others have won them.
A few thousand dollars · one to two months
Going to court
Registrars follow court orders. It isn’t our trade: we prepare the technical file and point you to a lawyer.
Last resort
First, we check it’s really yours
Before anything else, we ask for proof that the business and the name are yours. We never recover a site for someone who doesn’t own it.
A real case
Six websites, none in the company’s name
A Greater Montréal real estate group wanted to know who held its websites. The answer: its former developer, everywhere. Domain names, hosting, platforms, analytics.
- One domain was due to expire six weeks later. Without a renewal, anyone could have registered it.
- One site ran a 2023 version of WordPress with publicly known security holes.
- Three sites had no email at all: messages sent to info@ bounced.
- Three sites had no working analytics since 2023.
The audit led to rebuilding the sites on accounts in the company’s name.
Pricing
One flat fee, credited if we keep working together
- First site
- $750
- Each additional site
- $250
Prices before tax. The audit fee is credited in full against a rebuild if you hire us for it. The audit also stands on its own: the report is yours.
Questions
What people ask us
The footer or the page code often says so. Otherwise, the public domain name directory shows the registrar and the dates, and the server address reveals the host. That’s the first step of the audit.
We only use the tools registrars and platforms provide, never forced access, and we first check that the business is yours. We’re not lawyers and this isn’t legal advice: if it has to go to court, we point you to one.
It comes down to one detail: whose name the domain is registered in. If it’s your business’s, you can take it back without them. If it’s theirs, what’s left is a domain name dispute, if the name is a trademark you already used, or court.
That’s fine. The audit is sold on its own and you keep the report. If you hire us for a rebuild later, its price is credited.
The steps change, not the principle. Webflow and Wix move a site from one account to another; with WordPress, what matters is access to the hosting. The audit tells you what you have and what to ask for.