A developer leaves: sometimes professionally, sometimes in the middle of the night, occasionally after deleting their work. What you're holding is your own website you can't get into. It's stressful and common. The good news: you don't need the developer — you need a clean audit of what you actually control, and a recovery that doesn't depend on them.
Check these first, yourself
Inventory every credential you can still reach: hosting — The service that runs your site on a server; the plan you pick decides your speed ceiling and your crash risk., registrar — The company where your domain name is registered — whoever controls that account controls the domain., payment, email, DNS — The internet's address book: it turns your domain name into the server visitors actually reach..
Change the passwords for everything you have — assume the old team still has them.
Check your domain: the registrar account is the one thing nobody can ever replace. Lock it down first.
Confirm you have a backup — A tested copy of your site you can restore from; an untested backup is a hope, not a plan. and — this is the part everyone skips — test that you can actually restore it.
Should you fix it yourself or call a rescue?
Still have questions?
Can my host reset access for me?
Often yes — your hosting provider can reset credentials if you own the account. The registrar (where the domain lives) is the one that matters most and sometimes the hardest to recover, so verify ownership documents early.
What if the developer won't hand it over?
Work-access disputes are a legal matter, and a calm factual request plus the threat of a formal claim usually works faster than an argument. The technical recovery and the legal angle should run in parallel.