Most people who call us have the same problem: the party that built their software has stopped. Sometimes announced politely, more often not. It still runs, revenue still flows through it, and nobody dares to change anything.

The first question is always: what is this going to cost? The honest answer is that we know after two weeks of reading and not before. What we can explain is what sets the price, so you can work out which end of the range you are on.

What pushes the price up

No documentation. Annoying, but it costs less than people think. Code can be read. What is genuinely expensive is code that does something other than what it appears to do.

No test environment. If the only place it runs is production, every change becomes an operation with risk. Setting up a second environment is often the first thing we do, and the best money you will spend.

Expired dependencies. A PHP version from five years ago, a framework three major releases behind, packages that no longer exist. Updating is nearly always possible, but it is work you cannot see and that gives you nothing new. That makes it an awkward conversation, and it still has to happen first.

Accounts owned by someone else. The domain is registered to the agency, the server runs under their account, the certificates go through their mailbox. This is not a technical problem but a legal and organisational one, and in practice it takes the longest.

What brings the price down

  • The code is in a repository with a readable history.
  • There is a framework underneath that people know. Laravel, Symfony, Django: fine. Something home-grown from 2013: less so.
  • Someone who worked on it is still reachable, even if it is only an hour on the phone.
  • The system does one thing. The more separate things it does, the longer it takes to see the whole.

What you can arrange yourself

Even before you know who you will continue with, this is always worth doing:

  1. Put the domain, the hosting and the external accounts in your own company's name.
  2. Make sure you have access to the repository, or ask for an export if there is none.
  3. Take a database backup you can restore yourself, and try restoring it once.
  4. Write down who holds which keys. With departed agencies that is more often the problem than the code.

That is not a sales pitch: this should be yours, whoever manages it.

How we go about it

We start by reading. Within about two weeks we know how the platform fits together, what is broken and what has to happen first. We write that down in plain language, so the knowledge does not end up inside one head again.

After that we take over the maintenance: updates, monitoring, backups we actually restore now and then, and new features when you want them. Within three weeks or so you know where you stand again.

There is more about that on the page about software takeover. Calling works too: 010 318 0515.