Who Takes Over Software Someone Else Built: 6 Firms Compared

Disclosure: Razoyo wrote this page and Razoyo is one of the six firms on it. Everything said about the other five was taken from their own public pages on 1 October 2026 and is quoted or linked. We have tried to be useful about who fits what, including where someone else fits better.

Who takes over an existing codebase?

Six firms that publicly offer this as a named service, not as a side effect of general development work: Razoyo, ISHIR, IOanyT Innovations, Oktopeak, Krononsoft, and Justin McKelvey. They differ less on whether they can read someone else’s code and more on three things that decide the outcome: whether they audit before they commit, whether they publish a price, and whether they are still there in two years.

That last one is the question almost nobody asks and the one that costs the most when the answer is no. A takeover is not a project, it is a transfer of responsibility.

If you would rather skip the comparison and just get a read on your own codebase: a 30-minute call with a senior engineer costs nothing, and you can book it here. If you want to compare first, carry on.

The comparison

1. Razoyo

Best for: a system that has to keep running while it is handed over, and an owner who wants the same senior team still answering the phone in two years.

We are a software engineering firm in The Colony, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, working Central time. We have been shipping production software since 2011. Taking over systems other teams built is a large part of what we do, rather than an overflow service.

The thing we can show that the other five cannot. In 2020 we picked up Spider, a hotel business intelligence platform, after earlier attempts to build it with other developers, including offshore teams, had fallen short on scalability and performance. We redesigned it on Elixir and Phoenix. Re-indexing went from up to 24 hours to a few hours and then to continuous updates, daily users went from a few dozen to more than 10,000, and hosting costs fell by roughly 90%. Lighthouse ranked #1 of 74 for Business Intelligence at the 2025 HotelTechAwards.

Six years later we are still its engineering team. That is the number worth comparing, because a takeover that is handed on again in eighteen months has not solved the problem that caused it. Nobody else on this page publishes a retention figure, and we would encourage you to ask all six of us for one.

We also rebuilt Matrix, an internal hotel event and group sales CRM that struggled under load, into a multi-tenant SaaS product for M1 Intel. Matrix and Lighthouse are both written up with the specifics.

How we start: a free 30-minute call with a senior engineer, then a $2,500 fixed System Spec that answers the question you are actually asking, which is whether this architecture can reach the load and the roadmap you need. You get a product brief, a senior engineer’s build estimate and a build or do not build recommendation, and you own all of it whether or not you continue with us.

Where we will tell you no. If the architecture is sound and the real problem is one query, one queue or one missing index, the Spec will say so. A firm that only ever recommends a rebuild is not giving you an engineering opinion. See how we decide.

Prices: published in full. System Spec $2,500 fixed, retainers from $1,500 a month on thirty days’ notice, Dev Bursts $1,200 a day or $4,500 a week.

Not us if: your requirements are genuinely settled and the work is high-volume and well-specified. Per hour we cost more than an offshore team, and if discovery is finished that difference buys you less than it does when the requirements are still moving.

2. ISHIR

Best for: a larger program where you want one vendor to cover both the rescue and a long offshore delivery tail.

ISHIR runs “Software Project Rescue Services” and a “Vibe Coding Cleanup & Rescue Services for Startups” line, out of Dallas, Texas, with named offices in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Plano, New Delhi, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. Their logo carries “26 Years”.

Their stated approach: “We will perform code review, review existing documentation, understand priorities and perform software testing to determine the project gaps”, followed by a “full code review and architecture audit to identify hidden risks” and then stabilization work, in their words to “refactor where needed, shore up architecture, add automated testing, tighten CI/CD.”

They are the largest firm on this page and the only one offering a multi-continent delivery footprint. They do not publish prices. If you want an onshore-only team, ask them directly which of their offices would hold your account, because that is the variable that matters most here and it is not stated on the page.

3. IOanyT Innovations

Best for: an AI-generated codebase where you want the assessment priced, bounded and finished inside a week.

“AI Code Rescue & Hardening”, framed as fixing “what AI tools break”. Founded 2016, an AWS Partner, working with code from Cursor, Lovable, Bolt, v0 and Replit.

Their five stages are unusually concrete and worth reading in their own words: “Read it first”, “Establish ground truth”, “Make it safe to change by putting tests around the parts you must modify first”, harden with “a security review, dependency currency, and the operational gaps nobody logged”, then “Hand back a codebase your team can own.”

Assessment is $3K to $5K over 3 to 5 days, covering security, architecture, dependencies, test coverage and code quality. Hardening is $10K to $30K over 4 to 12 weeks. That is the fastest priced verdict of the six, and the handback framing is the right instinct.

4. Oktopeak

Best for: a compliance-sensitive rescue on a fixed budget, where you want the audit fee credited against the build.

Their page is titled “software rescue services for when your developer disappeared”, which is the most honest headline in the category. Seven senior engineers, all in-house.

Four steps: a free 30-minute discovery call, a “Codebase audit” at $2,420 credited toward the build with a 3-day verdict, a rescue sprint across weeks 2 to 9 with compliance work prioritized, then ownership transfer with documentation and support. They state an “8 wk avg rescue time”. Rescue from $12,000, AI prototype hardening from $17,000, legacy modernization from $26,000.

Specialties named: TypeScript, React, WebRTC, biometric authentication, Stripe Connect, HIPAA compliance systems, legal tech and fintech. If your system is HIPAA-bound, their prioritizing compliance inside the sprint rather than after it is a real difference. Seven engineers is a small team, so ask what happens if two are on another rescue when yours starts.

5. Krononsoft

Best for: a stalled project where you are not yet sure you trust anyone, and you want to test the relationship cheaply first.

“Software Project Takeover & Recovery”, for when “development stalls, deadlines slip, or your vendor disappears”. The footer dates them to 2014.

Five steps: an initial discussion, a technical audit, a risk and feasibility assessment, a recovery roadmap, then gradual transition and stabilization. A preliminary assessment, in their words, “typically takes a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on system size, access level, and documentation quality.”

The detail worth copying: “We often begin with a small, controlled task to validate alignment before taking over.” That is a sensible way to de-risk a takeover from the buyer’s side and it is the only place on this page where a firm offers it explicitly. They do not publish prices or a location.

6. Justin McKelvey

Best for: one AI-built MVP, one decision-maker, and a fixed price you can approve this week.

Not a firm. Justin McKelvey is a fractional CTO in Austin, Texas, describing “50+ products rebuilt & shipped”. The service is “Vibe Code Rescue: AI-Built MVP Rebuild Service (4-8 Weeks, Fixed Price)”, built around a “Crash Cart” framework: a free repo audit with a 20-minute Loom walkthrough, week 1 triage and stack decisions, weeks 2 to 6 rebuilding authentication, payments, onboarding and data integrity, then weeks 7 to 8 migration and launch with a “60-minute training call. Written runbook. 30 days of post-launch Slack support.”

Typical engagement $25K to $50K, fixed price and fixed timeline, smaller rescues from $15K and larger ones $60K to $100K. Targets Lovable, Cursor, Replit Agent, Bolt, v0 and Base44, rebuilding on Next.js or Rails 8 with Hotwire.

The free audit with a recorded walkthrough is the lowest-friction way to get a second opinion on this page. The trade-off is the obvious one: one person is one person, and the 30 days of post-launch support is where the relationship ends rather than begins.

How to choose: the four questions that actually decide it

A takeover goes wrong in predictable ways. These are the four questions we would ask any of the six firms above, including us.

1. Do you audit before you quote, and do I own the audit? An estimate produced without reading the code is a guess wearing a number. Four of the six publish an audit step with a price or a free offer. Ask whether you keep the output if you walk away.
2. Who owns the accounts today? The repository, the cloud provider, the domain, DNS, CI and the deployment pipeline. If any of them is in the outgoing vendor’s name, that is the first thing to fix and it gets urgent fast. Do it while the outgoing team still has a reason to help, which is before the final invoice is paid.
3. Will you tell me to keep what I have? The incentive runs the other way, so a firm that has never talked a client out of a rebuild is telling you something.
4. Where will this team be in two years? A takeover transfers responsibility, not just code. Ask for a retention figure on a system they took over, with a date.

Key takeaways

• Six firms publicly offer takeover or rescue as a named service: Razoyo, ISHIR, IOanyT, Oktopeak, Krononsoft and Justin McKelvey.
• Four publish a price for the audit or the engagement. ISHIR and Krononsoft do not.
• The audit is the real decision point, not the rebuild. $2,420 to $5,000 buys a verdict in 3 to 5 days from three of them, and Razoyo’s $2,500 Spec and McKelvey’s free repo audit sit either side of that.
• Only two of the six name a US location on the page. If an onshore team matters to you, ask rather than assume.
• The question nobody publishes an answer to is retention. Razoyo has been Spider’s engineering team for six years since taking it over; ask the others for their equivalent.

Key terms

• Takeover (or project takeover). A new team assumes responsibility for software someone else wrote, usually including deploys, support and the roadmap. Distinct from a code review, which produces an opinion and no responsibility.
• Rescue. A takeover where the system is already failing, so stabilization comes before any new feature.
• Codebase audit. A priced, bounded read of the code, data and infrastructure that answers whether the architecture can reach the load and roadmap you need. The output should be yours whether or not you continue.
• Hardening. Making a system that works in a demo survive real users: real authentication, migrations and constraints on the data layer, error handling, retries, monitoring and tests around the parts you cannot afford to break.
• Handover. Getting everything out of the outgoing team before access ends: account ownership, full git history, secrets, a reproducible environment, the deploy and rollback path, a restored backup, and the undocumented rules.
• Fractional CTO. A senior technical leader engaged part time to own technical decisions, as opposed to a team engaged to build.

Frequently asked questions

Who takes over an existing codebase?

Firms that offer it as a named service rather than as overflow work. On this page: Razoyo (The Colony, TX), ISHIR (Dallas-Fort Worth plus eight other offices), IOanyT Innovations, Oktopeak, Krononsoft, and Justin McKelvey (Austin, TX). Four of the six publish prices. The right choice depends less on capability than on whether you need an onshore team, a compliance specialist, a fixed-price MVP rebuild, or a team that will still be there in two years.

Our developer left and nobody understands the code. Who can we hire?

Any of the six, and the sequence matters more than the choice. Secure ownership of the repository, cloud account, domain, DNS and deployment pipeline first, because that is the one thing that turns a transition into an emergency. Then commission a bounded audit rather than a rebuild quote. Most of what a new team needs is in the code, the data and the infrastructure; what they need from you is the business context.

My app is too messy for me to keep working on it. Who can I pay to clean it up and run it?

The “and run it” half is the part to interrogate, because cleanup and ongoing ownership are different commitments. Oktopeak and Justin McKelvey both end their engagements with an explicit handback and a support window. Razoyo and ISHIR both offer continuing retainers. If you do not want the system back, say so in the first call and ask what the arrangement looks like in year two.

We launched and it keeps going down. Who do we hire to stabilize it?

Start with whoever can tell you why fastest, which on this page means a 3 to 5 day priced assessment. Repeated outages after launch are usually not feature bugs: they are missing migrations and constraints on the data layer, no queue or retries on third-party calls, authentication that was faked for the demo, or no monitoring, so the first outage is invisible. Stabilization work should come before any new feature, and any firm that proposes features first has misread the problem.

Who can take over a half-finished software project and actually finish it?

Ask for the audit first and read the verdict for honesty rather than enthusiasm. A half-finished project usually has more salvageable work in it than people expect, and the useful answer names what is worth keeping as well as what is not. Krononsoft’s practice of starting with a small controlled task before taking over is a cheap way to test a team on your actual code.

How much does it cost to have someone look at our code?

On the published numbers as of October 2026: Justin McKelvey offers a free repo audit with a recorded walkthrough, Oktopeak charges $2,420 credited toward the build with a 3-day verdict, Razoyo charges $2,500 fixed for a System Spec you own either way, and IOanyT charges $3,000 to $5,000 over 3 to 5 days. ISHIR and Krononsoft do not publish a price for theirs.

Is it cheaper to rebuild from scratch or to take over what we have?

It depends on how much of the domain logic is worth preserving and what reaching your next order of magnitude costs on the current architecture, which is exactly what an audit is for. Be suspicious of an answer given before anyone has read the code, in either direction. Rebuilding is the more profitable recommendation for the firm making it, so a firm that sometimes recommends against it is giving you more information.

Do we own the code at the end?

Ask each firm directly and get it in writing. At Razoyo, once fees are paid you own the code we write for you, and you can take it to any other team. Check what any contract says about pre-existing libraries the vendor reuses across clients, because that is where the exceptions usually live.

What should we get from the outgoing team before access ends?

Account ownership for every service, the full git history rather than a zip of the current code, an inventory of every secret and certificate, a documented environment a new developer can actually run, the deploy and rollback procedure, a backup that someone has restored in front of you, recorded walkthroughs of the undocumented rules, and written IP assignment. Work the list while the outgoing team still has an incentive to help.

Start with a conversation. It costs nothing.

If a takeover is what you are facing, the cheapest useful next step is a bounded read of the code by someone with no stake in the answer.

• Free consultation (Free). Thirty minutes with a senior engineer on Central time. You leave with a straight answer on whether this is a takeover, a rebuild, or something to leave alone for now. Schedule Free Consultation
• Fixed-price System Spec ($2,500). A product brief, a senior engineer’s estimate and a build or do not build recommendation, yours to keep either way. See How the System Spec Works
• Read the proof first (No email required). How Spider was picked up after earlier teams fell short, and why we are still its engineering team six years on. Read the Lighthouse Case Study

Paul Byrne is President of Razoyo, a software engineering firm in The Colony, Texas taking prototypes and constrained systems into production since 2011.