First: Don't Panic, Act
This is one of the most stressful situations for a business owner. Your site is down, orders aren't coming in, and the person who built it isn't answering. Here's the order of operations.
Step 1: Find Your Hosting Credentials (Next 30 Minutes)
The site lives on a server somewhere. You need to find out where.
Check:
- Your email inbox for "welcome to hosting" or "your account has been created" emails — search for keywords like "cPanel", "Hosting", "FTP", "SSH"
- If the developer set it up through your account, you have the credentials
- If they set it up through their own account — you have a bigger problem (see Step 3)
Common hosting providers in Ukraine: Ukraine.com.ua, Hostiq, Timeweb, Fozzy, nic.ua — check if you have accounts on any of these.
Step 2: Check If It's Just Hosting
Once you have hosting access, check:
- Is the hosting plan expired? Check your billing section.
- Is the domain expired? Go to nic.ua or wherever your domain is registered and check expiry date.
Many "site is down" emergencies are just an expired domain or hosting plan. Pay the bill, wait 30–60 minutes, site comes back.
Step 3: If the Developer Controlled Everything
This is the worst scenario — developer hosted on their account, holds all passwords, now unreachable.
What you can still do:
Contact the hosting provider directly. Explain you're the business owner and the developer who managed the account is unreachable. Some providers will verify ownership through your domain registration documents or business registration.
Your domain registrar and your hosting company are separate — even if the developer controlled hosting, you might still control your domain. Pointing the domain to new hosting is an option.
If you have a recent backup of the site files (even old ones), a new developer can restore from that.
What to collect right now:
- Any emails you received from the developer mentioning hosting, passwords, or server details
- FTP credentials if they ever sent them
- Database name/credentials if mentioned anywhere
- Backups if you ever received them
Step 4: Find a New Developer — But Brief Them Properly
When you find someone to help, give them:
- The domain name
- Any credentials you found
- What was working before it went down
- When it last worked
Don't say "just fix it." The more context you give, the faster it gets resolved.
Step 5: When the Site Is Back — Do This Immediately
Once the crisis is resolved, make sure this never happens again:
1. Get all credentials in a document you control. Hosting login, FTP/SSH access, database credentials, domain registrar login, admin panel login. Store in 1Password, Bitwarden, or even a locked Google Doc — but somewhere you own.
2. Make sure hosting and domain are registered in your name or your company's email. Never let a developer register your domain or hosting under their personal account. You'll always be a hostage.
3. Set up automated backups. Most hosting providers have a backup option. Enable it. If your developer manages it, ask them to show you where backups are.
4. Document who did what. After every project, get from your developer: what was installed, where it's hosted, what plugins/modules are used, how to do basic maintenance.
The Real Lesson
The developers who vanish usually had warning signs. But the damage they cause is made much worse by clients not having their own access to their own sites.
Your website is a business asset. You should have full access to it — just like you have keys to your own office. A good developer hands over all credentials at the end of a project. If yours didn't, that was the first sign something was wrong.