Can you take over an app another agency built?

Yes, as long as you can get hold of the code and the accounts it runs on. Secure those first. Then our free architectural review tells you whether to fix what you have, replace it piece by piece or rebuild it.

Picking up someone else’s product is normal work for us. Electragram handed us its event platform mid-season, from a previous supplier. Live events kept running while we built the next features on top.

Secure everything before you give notice

Don’t fire the old agency first. Goodwill is at its thinnest the day you hand in notice, so get every piece into your company’s name while things are still civil.

• The code. The repository, with its full history and any unfinished branches.
• Hosting. Admin and billing access to AWS, Google Cloud or wherever it runs.
• Your domain. The registrar account itself, not a guest login.
• App store listings. Your App Store and Google Play apps, plus the Android signing key.
• Your data. A recent database backup you’ve downloaded yourself.
• Third-party services. Stripe, email and analytics, in your name and on your card.

Without the code, you own a screenshot, not a product.

Then read the contract. In the UK, an agency owns the code it writes for you unless a signed assignment says otherwise. Do I own the code and IP? explains what to look for.

Pay what you fairly owe. A settled invoice buys a cooperative handover, which is worth more than the money. Once the handover lands, remove the old team’s access and change every password and key they could see.

How the accounts move across

Most of this is paperwork, not engineering. Each platform has its own transfer route.

Apple says a transferred app keeps its ratings and reviews, and users keep getting updates. That matters. A rebuild should ship as an update to your existing listing, never as a brand-new app.

If we run your AWS side from then on, it lives in its own AWS account under our AWS Control Tower. That whole account can move out to you whenever you want it.

The free architectural review

Before anyone quotes, someone has to look at what you’ve actually got. That’s the review, and it costs you nothing. We check:

• whether the app builds and runs from the repository alone
• what it does, against what you were promised
• the business rules buried in the code, like pricing quirks and permissions
• the tests, the security and the shape of your data

You get a plain-English recommendation you could forward to an investor. Sometimes it says the code is fine and the team was the problem. Sometimes a small fix will do, and you don’t need a big project at all.

Fix it or rebuild it?

For years the advice was never to rebuild. That was sound when every line was typed by hand.

Experienced engineers using AI tools now write, test and document a new codebase far faster than before. A tangled codebase can often be replaced faster than it can be untangled. So a close call leans towards rebuilding more often than it used to.

The exception is a busy live app with tangled data. There, replacing it one piece at a time can still be safer.

Where AI speeds things up, and where it bites

AI speeds up people who already know what good looks like. Point it at a messy codebase with “clean this up” and it quietly drops the rules nobody wrote down.

So we write those rules down first, and pin down what the old app does today with tests. A senior engineer reads every change, and AI tools stay away from your live data. Speed is the reward for doing the boring part properly.

What it costs

That depends on what the review finds, and anyone quoting before seeing the code is guessing. If it points to a rebuild, LaunchPad is a fixed price of £25k, £60k or £100k excluding VAT. If it points to a fix, the job may be far smaller.

One founder came to us through Envestors with a stalled offshore build. Discovery took two weeks, and the first stage of the new build was working in twelve days.

If you’re here because an agency let you down, what if an agency has let me down before? is written for you. The full playbook, from audit to migration day, is in our guide to what to do when your agency stalls.