Built my business for months just to get locked out overnight
Built an entire business website from scratch with a developer I trusted. Paid him on time, gave him multiple chances, tolerated delays, bugs, broken deployments, and constant issues because I genuinely believed people deserve room to improve.
Then the moment I terminated the contract professionally, he revoked every access I had.
Website access gone. Hosting gone. Credentials gone.
Then came the demand: “Pay me $250 if you want your website back.”
Mind you, I already paid him his dues. Every single rupee.
What hurts the most isn’t even the money. It’s the reputation damage. Explaining to clients why systems are down. Explaining to my own team why operations stopped overnight. Looking incompetent because someone else decided to weaponize access they were trusted with.
The funniest part? I developed most of the actual operational structure myself at barely 1% of what I paid him for this. The person maintaining it thought holding access hostage was a smart move.
Ended up filing a GD and escalating legally because there was literally no other option left.
Now suddenly apologies are coming in.
To every founder, freelancer, startup owner, or small business:
Buy your own domain
Own your own hosting
Never let a dev keep recovery access
Keep backups
Keep agreements in writing
Trust is good. Documentation is better.
And to developers reading this: You are not just writing code. You are handling someone’s livelihood, reputation, and business. Don’t destroy your future trying to squeeze short-term money out of clients.
One bad decision can follow you much longer than one lost project.