Yes. Agencies close, get acquired, or simply stop answering, and their clients discover on the same day that they do not know where their own website lives. The rescue has two halves. First, recovery: locating the code, the database, the domain registration and the hosting account, and getting copies of everything into accounts that you own. Second, stability: moving the site somewhere safe, applying the security patches that were probably missed towards the end, and documenting what exists so no single supplier can ever hold it hostage again. I have done this often enough to know where agencies usually kept things and how to reconstruct a site from surprisingly little.
An agency closing rarely announces itself. Emails slow down, invoices keep arriving, then one day the phone number is dead and your website is running on infrastructure you cannot access, under accounts you never held, deployed from a repository you have never seen. The site still works, which disguises how exposed you are: one unpaid hosting bill or one expired certificate and it stops.
The immediate job is getting copies of everything into your hands. That means the source code, the database, the media files, the domain and DNS control, and whatever deployment configuration exists. Sometimes there is a cooperative administrator or liquidator; sometimes there is nothing but the live server, and the site has to be reconstructed from what can be extracted. Both are solvable, and I will tell you within a day or two which situation you are in.
Once the assets are safe, the site needs a stable home. Many rescues move onto my managed Umbraco hosting, where patching happens within 48 hours of release and backups are verified by actually restoring them, not by trusting a green tick. Just as important, everything ends up in accounts you own, with credentials you hold, and a written record of how the site fits together. The goal of a good rescue is that the next transition, whenever it comes, is boring.
Most rescued sites need a little care once the dust settles: missed updates, accumulated small bugs, sometimes an overdue upgrade. My support and maintenance plans exist for exactly that. But the first step is always the same: get in touch, tell me what stopped working and when, and we will find out together what can be recovered. The answer is usually more than you fear.
Tell me what you're working on and I'll come back within one working day.
A specialist Umbraco developer offering freelance / contract services to a wide variety of clients across the UK
Maesgwyn, 3 Claremont rd,
Llandudno, North Wales, LL30 2UF