What happens if my developer disappears?
July 19, 2026 1 min read
If you hold the source code, the database credentials, the domain and the hosting account, it is a hiring problem. If you hold none of them, it is an existential one — and you find out which on the day it happens.
The four things to hold, today
The domain, registered in your company name with your email on it. The hosting and database accounts, in your name, with the developer added as a user. The source code, in a repository you own. And a written list of every third-party service the system touches, with who owns each account.
This takes an afternoon and it is the cheapest insurance in software.
How to tell before you sign
Ask where the code will live and whose name is on the hosting. An answer that involves the developer's own account, "our platform", or a framework only they use is the answer.
What a real handover looks like
A repository you own, a README that gets a new developer running locally in under an hour, migrations that build the schema from empty, and a deployment note. Not a zip file emailed on the last day.
