Developer disappeared. Agency went bust. Offshore team delivered a mess. Whatever's happened to your app, we've seen it before and we know how to get it moving again.
Every month we hear from founders and business owners whose app is stuck in limbo. The developer went quiet. The agency is no longer trading. The offshore team delivered something, but it doesn't work properly. The app is 95% done but nobody can finish it. The payments are broken and the original developer isn't responding.
These situations are more common than people think, and they're rarely the client's fault. Building software with unfamiliar teams is genuinely difficult, especially when there's pressure to move fast or save money. What matters is understanding where things are and what needs to happen next.
We've rescued apps from offshore disasters, agency insolvencies, and disappeared developers. In our experience, roughly half of the rescue enquiries we receive involve an offshore team that stopped communicating, and the other half involve a developer or agency that simply isn't around any more. If that sounds like your situation, you're in the right place.
Every rescue starts with a free code review. We look at what you've got, tell you what's salvageable, and give you a written report before you commit to anything. Here's what we typically deal with:
• Developer disappeared or unresponsive? We assess what exists, recover what we can, and plan the fix.
• Agency went bust or into administration? Source code recovery, liquidator liaison, full codebase takeover.
• Offshore team delivered broken code? We run a full code review and security audit, then decide whether to fix incrementally or start fresh.
• App Store keeps rejecting your app? We audit against the latest guidelines, fix the issues, and handle resubmission.
• Live app with broken payments or core features? Same-day triage, clear diagnosis, priority fix.
• No source code available? We assess whether decompilation is viable and scope a rebuild from the live app if not.
Once we've done the code review, we give you a fixed price for the rescue work where the scope is clear, or an honest time-and-materials estimate where it isn't. You'll always know what you're committing to before work starts. After the rescue, most clients move to an App Care retainer with the same team. No handover, no re-learning the codebase.
Written by Gareth Reese, Founder and CTO of Foresight Mobile. Gareth has overseen app rescue projects for clients across the UK, including cases involving offshore team failures, agency insolvencies, and disappeared developers.
An actionable four-week plan with clear deliverables and an unbeatable £3,500 price point, credited against your first development sprint.
Total client time commitment: 5-7 hours across 4 weeks
We meet with your key stakeholders to understand your business goals, user needs, and technical constraints. You'll share any existing research, designs, or documentation you have.
Our engineering team assesses the technical feasibility, identifies integration points with your existing systems, and evaluates architecture options.
We determine whether Flutter, native development, or another approach makes the most sense for your specific requirements.
We create clickable prototypes so you can experience your app before it's built. You'll test navigation flows, validate the user experience, and gather feedback from stakeholders.
Alongside this, we prioritise features based on business value and technical complexity, mapping out a phased delivery plan with a detailed cost estimate.
You receive your complete Gameplan pack, plus a presentation walkthrough with Q&A. Your team walks away with everything needed to make a confident decision.
We start with a code review, give you a straight assessment of what's there, and tell you exactly what it'll take to fix. No guessing, no quoting blind.
Most clients who come to us for app rescue end up on an App Care retainer afterwards. Once we know the codebase, we can look after it properly. You end up with a stable app, proper documentation, and a team who understands the code and can keep it healthy going forward.
That transition is straightforward because it's the same people. The developer who fixed your broken Stripe integration is the same developer who monitors it going forward. No handover, no re-learning, no "that wasn't our code" conversations.
If you don't need ongoing support, that's fine too. After the rescue, all code, documentation, and credentials are yours. We don't hold anything hostage, and we don't create artificial dependencies. If you want to take the rescued app to an internal team or another agency, you can.
Same Team Continuity • Full Code Ownership • Documentation Handover • Optional App Care Retainer
If your app is live and something critical is broken right now, that's not a normal enquiry. Payments failing. Push notifications not sending. The app crashing on the latest iOS. Users are affected and every hour costs money and reputation.
We treat live-app emergencies differently from standard rescue work. Get in touch, describe the issue and the technology involved, and we'll give you a realistic assessment within hours. If we can help, we'll tell you what it'll take. If we can't (wrong technology, wrong timezone, genuinely beyond repair), we'll tell you that too.
For clients who come to us through an emergency, the natural next step is usually an App Care retainer once the immediate crisis is resolved. Same team, no re-learning required. You go from "everything is on fire" to "someone reliable is looking after this" in a matter of days.
Same-Day Assessment • Priority Scheduling • Honest Viability Check • Transition to App Care
A rejected app doesn't mean a broken app. We've resolved Guideline 4.3 (spam/clone) issues, privacy manifest rejections, SDK compliance failures, and metadata policy violations, often with minimal code changes.
Google Play rejections follow a similar pattern: policy changes around data safety declarations, target API level requirements, and content compliance. We handle both platforms.
The key is understanding what Apple or Google actually wants (which isn't always what the rejection message says) and making the minimum changes needed to get through review. We don't over-engineer the fix.
Apple Guideline 4.3 Resolution • Privacy Manifest Compliance • Google Play Policy Fixes • Resubmission Support
A messy codebase doesn't always mean starting from scratch. Problems like missing error handling, poor security practices, and inconsistent code quality are fixable without a full rewrite.
We assess what's salvageable and what isn't. For codebases worth building on, the fixes tend to be specific: security remediation, adding test coverage, version control discipline, and documentation. When a clean rewrite using the existing app as a reference is faster and safer than patching, we'll tell you that too.
What we won't do is make you feel bad about hiring offshore in the first place. Budget pressures are real. Recommendations don't always work out. What matters now is getting the app to where it needs to be.
Codebase Assessment • Incremental Fix vs Rewrite • Security Remediation • Documentation
Lost your source code? It's more common than you'd think. Agencies go into administration without handing over assets. Developers become possessive or unresponsive. Freelancers vanish. We've dealt with all of these situations.
If the app is on the App Store or Google Play, we can often work with a compiled build. The quality of what we can recover depends on the technology used and what protections were applied, but decompilation frequently gives us enough to understand the architecture and build from. If the agency used GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, you may still have access without realising it. Liquidators sometimes release source code as part of the insolvency process, and we can advise on what to ask for.
Where source code genuinely can't be recovered, we'll scope a rebuild using the existing app as a working specification. You already know what the app should do. That's half the battle.
Decompilation Assessment • Repository Recovery • Liquidator Liaison • Rebuild Scoping
We don't quote blind, and we don't make you pay before you know if you can trust us. Every rescue starts with a free code review. Send us access to the repository and we'll come back with a written assessment covering architecture quality, security posture, test coverage, and a ranked list of specific issues.
Getting to the point where you hand over the code is already a significant step. You've described the situation, we've had a conversation, and you're serious about fixing it. A free review means no financial commitment before you've seen how we think and whether we're the right team for the job.
From there, we scope the rescue work with a fixed price where possible, or a time-and-materials estimate where the unknowns are too significant to price upfront. You'll have a clear picture of what you're committing to before any work starts.
Free Written Report • Security Assessment • Architecture Review • Fixed-Price ScopingNo. We see situations like this every week and the circumstances are almost always understandable: budget pressures, using an agency based on a recommendation, a developer who was fine for the first few months and then wasn't. What matters to us is understanding where things are and what needs to happen next, not scoring points about how it got here. You'll get a straight, practical assessment.
A single-commit codebase is more common than you'd think. We see it regularly with offshore and freelance platform projects. The lack of version history makes it harder to understand what changed and when, and means we can't roll back to an earlier working state. But it doesn't necessarily mean the code is unworkable. The code review will tell us whether the logic is sound, what the security posture is, and whether it's worth building on. Sometimes it is. Sometimes a clean rewrite from the existing codebase as a reference is faster. We'll tell you which.
The code review is free. We'll review your codebase and deliver a written report covering the technical issues, risk areas, and our recommended approach before you commit to anything.
If you decide to go ahead with the rescue work, pricing depends on scope. A targeted fix for a specific critical issue typically starts from £5,000. A full rescue covering architecture, security hardening, and performance typically ranges from £15,000 to £40,000+. We'll quote a fixed price based on the code review findings, so there are no surprises.
You're not paying for an assessment. You get a clear written report first, and only then decide whether to proceed.
Yes. App Store rejections are frustrating but usually solvable. Apple's guidelines change regularly, and what got approved two years ago may not pass today. Common rejection reasons we deal with include Guideline 4.3 (spam or clone apps), privacy manifest compliance, outdated SDK versions, and data handling disclosures. We'll review the rejection reason, audit the relevant parts of the app, and advise on what needs to change before resubmission.
If payments are failing or a core feature is down, that's urgent and we treat it that way. Get in touch, describe the issue and the technology involved, and we'll give you a realistic assessment within hours. We don't put rescue enquiries into a standard sales queue.
First, try to recover the source code. If the agency used a third-party repository (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket), you may still have access. If not, check whether the app exists as a compiled build anywhere, as that may allow partial recovery. Liquidators sometimes release source code as part of the insolvency process, and it's worth asking your solicitor or the appointed insolvency practitioner specifically about IP assets. If none of that works, get in touch. We can assess whether reverse engineering is viable and what it would cost.
Not necessarily. We always start with a code review to understand what's salvageable. Often the architecture is fine and we can fix issues incrementally. When the codebase is genuinely unsalvageable (no version history, security vulnerabilities throughout, no documentation whatsoever), a rewrite is sometimes faster and safer than patching. We'll give you a straight answer either way. We won't recommend a full rewrite unless it's genuinely the right call.
This is unfortunately common. If you paid for the code to be built, you should legally own it, but getting it back can take time. In some cases, a solicitor's letter resolves it quickly. In others, the practical route is to extract a recoverable version from a compiled build and start from there. We can walk you through what's realistic for your specific situation, including whether the IP is clearly yours and what recovery options exist.
Sometimes, yes. If the app is on the App Store or Google Play, we can often decompile or reverse-engineer a compiled build to get a working starting point. The quality of what we can recover depends on the technology used and what's available. We'll always give you an honest assessment before committing to a fixed price. We won't take your money on a rescue that isn't viable.
App rescue is the process of taking over an app project that's stuck, broken, or abandoned. We review what exists, fix what's broken, and get it to a state where it actually works. You probably need it if your developer has gone quiet or is unresponsive; your app is nearly done but nobody can finish it; payments or critical features are broken; your agency is no longer trading; or you've been handed a codebase with no documentation and no idea what's running where.
The best apps come from close partnership. You'll work with us as an extension of your team: your vision drives every decision while our mobile app development experience guides you around common pitfalls.
70% of app projects fail due to misaligned expectations and market misunderstanding. The App Gameplan catches these issues before you've committed significant budget.
Start with a 30-minute call. No pressure, no sales pitch. Just an honest conversation about your project.
Get in Touch
Laying the Foundation for Success
It's your concept, your dream. You'll share your vision, target audience, and business objectives. We'll listen, research, and recommend until we've transformed your initial idea into a clearly defined mobile app concept.
You'll get competitive analysis that identifies opportunities and potential challenges. We'll outline key features and create a detailed project roadmap together.
Thorough planning and research are crucial for mitigating risks, ensuring a smooth development process, and maximising your app's chances of success.
Creating an Engaging and Intuitive Experience
Good design drives engagement and retention. You'll work with our in-house designers to map the user journey, ensuring intuitive navigation throughout. We design wireframes and mockups so you can visualise the product before any code is written. Once we've agreed on core functionality, you'll test high-fidelity interactive prototypes on a real device with real users.
You'll validate ideas before committing to development. Interactive prototypes catch usability issues early, when they're cheap to fix.
Building Future-Proof Code You Can Scale
Your design becomes a working app. We use Flutter with industry best practices to build scalable, maintainable code that grows with your business. Easy updates, straightforward feature additions. Every app undergoes rigorous automated and manual testing across multiple devices and platforms before you see it.
Your app won't become technical debt. Our architecture and documentation standards make it a valuable business asset that's cost-effective to maintain and enhance.
Ensuring Long-Term Success Through Partnership
You'll get guidance through App Store submission, ensuring your app meets all requirements and regulations. We work with you on App Store optimisation to increase visibility and drive downloads. After launch, we proactively monitor performance, address issues quickly, and collaborate on updates and enhancements.
Your app's success doesn't end at launch. Ongoing support maximises reach, generates revenue, and builds long-term success.
Your app, your way. Here's how we make it happen.
Our process begins with a comprehensive project plan and a transparent, fixed cost agreement. This ensures you know exactly what you're getting and how much it will cost, eliminating any unwelcome financial surprises. Regular progress calls with live demos give you a front-row seat to your app's development, keeping you informed and involved at every stage.
We're not just here for the build, we're here for the long haul. From navigating the App Store maze to providing ongoing technical support, we're with you all the way. Our expertise doesn't end at launch; we offer cost-effective maintenance plans and helpful guidance to ensure your app continues to thrive and evolve with your business. Your success is our success, and you can count on us every step of the way.
We believe the best apps are born from real user experiences. That's why user testing is at the core of everything we do. We involve real people from your target audience throughout the development process to ensure your app is intuitive, engaging, and truly meets their needs. Their honest feedback helps us to refine and enhance your app, resulting in a product that's not only user-friendly but loved by your users.
You know your business inside and out and we know how to make successful tech businesses. With years of hands-on CTO and app development experience, we're experts at understanding your needs and crafting innovative solutions that fit your budget and exceed expectations. Our collaborative process and hands-on prototyping ensure your final product isn't just an app – it's the realisation of your vision.
Our founder has been making mobile apps since 2003, before they were even called apps! Founded in 2017, we've got quite a few projects under our belt and a wealth of experience to call upon. Our core development team have been with us since the start, and one of the reasons we're considered the most experienced Flutter app development company in the UK.
We believe in the power of face-to-face collaboration. That's why we encourage you to visit us at our Manchester offices whenever you like. We're a friendly bunch, and we thrive on the energy and clarity that comes from an in-person chat. Building strong relationships is key to our collaborative approach, and we want you to feel comfortable dropping by for a brainstorming session, or just for a brew if you fancy.
