App Rescue
Your business has a mobile app and it no longer works properly. Either the people who built it are no longer around, or someone is still being paid to maintain it and the same thing keeps breaking. We find out which one it is and what is actually wrong, then put it back into a state where your customers can use it.
A one page status report costs $500 and takes two business days. A full rescue costs $3,500 to $8,000 and takes two to four weeks. The report fee comes off the rescue price if you go ahead, so start with the report. It is a piece of paper, not a commitment.
Or write to info@codixus.com with the name of your app. That is enough to start.
Is this you?
There are two different versions of this problem and they need different conversations. Most people assume they are in the first column. Plenty of them are in the second.
Nobody is looking after it
- Nobody has released a new version in a year or more, and the people who built it no longer answer.
- It opens on your old phone and not on a new one.
- It closes by itself the moment it opens.
- You cannot log in after reinstalling it.
- You are not sure who is paying for the server it talks to, or whether anyone still is.
Someone is being paid, and it is still wrong
- You pay someone every month, versions keep coming out, and the same complaint keeps coming back.
- A customer loads money onto their balance, the card is charged, and the balance does not move.
- The booking screen offers times that never turn into a confirmed appointment.
- An update wiped saved cards, saved addresses, or loyalty points.
- Your recent one star reviews all say the same sentence and nobody has answered any of them.
What both columns have in common is that the cost is invisible. The booking that used to arrive through the app simply never arrives, and a customer who never came appears in no report, because nobody counts them.
Two deadlines that are not ours
These are the stores' own published rules, not our sales argument. You can read them yourself at the links below.
Old apps stop reaching new phones
From that date an app already on Google Play has to target Android 15 (API level 35) or higher to remain available to new users on devices running a version of Android higher than the app's own target level. Anything submitted or updated from then on has to target Android 16 (API level 36) or higher. Google also publishes an extension you can request, which moves that date to 1 November 2026.
In plain terms: an app nobody has touched for two or three years typically targets a much older version than that, so the customer who changed phone this year stops being offered it in the store.
Google's own page →There is no such thing as a one line fix
Anything uploaded to App Store Connect now has to be built with Xcode 26 or later, using an iOS 26 development kit. For a project that has not been opened in two years, that means the tools, the parts it is assembled from, and the settings all have to be brought up to 2026 first, before a single visible bug can be touched.
This is the honest reason a repair is not a cheap afternoon of work, and it is the same reason the price is what it is.
Apple's own page →And one removal rule worth knowing
Apple sends a removal notice to apps that have gone three years without an update and sit below a download threshold, and gives them 90 days. The exception is the one that matters most: an app that closes the moment it opens is removed straight away, with no 90 days.
Apple's own page →One caveat, because it would be dishonest to leave it out. The Google Play deadline only bites if nobody has shipped an update. If your supplier released a version last month, none of the above is your problem, and the thing that is broken is broken for an entirely different reason. That is what the report is for.
What you get and what it costs
Three steps, and you only ever buy the next one. Prices exclude sales tax.
Status report
$500
Two business days. Comes off the rescue price in full.
- Which phones it opens on today and which it does not, recorded on screen. If it closes on opening, where.
- Where you stand in the stores: last release date, what the app is built against, whether it is still visible, and a calendar of what happens on which date.
- Every store review read and matched to the version it was written about, so you can see which complaints were fixed and which have survived three releases.
- An access list: who owns the Apple account, the Google account, the code, the server, the domain and the signing keys. Yours, your supplier's, or missing.
- A verdict. Worth repairing, or cheaper to replace. If it is the second one, we write that.
Delivered as one page in plain language, with the detail behind it as appendices.
Rescue
$3,500 to $8,000
Two to four weeks. Half up front, half before the release goes to the stores.
- $3,500 to $5,000 for one platform, iPhone or Android, when the server side is still healthy.
- $5,000 to $8,000 for both platforms.
- If the server side is dead as well, switched off, expired, or no longer answering, that is quoted separately.
- The project is brought up to the current Apple and Google tooling, which is what makes a release possible at all.
- The blocking faults from the report are fixed on current phones.
- The path your money travels is tested end to end on a real device and recorded. The job is done when a customer can book, order, or top up, not when it builds.
- A new release goes to both stores with current privacy declarations, age ratings and screenshots.
- Accounts and source code end up in your name, with a signed handover record and a calendar of the next twelve months of store deadlines.
Watch
$400 to $900 a month
Six months minimum, then monthly. Offered after a rescue, not before one.
- Up to four hours of small work a month.
- A compatibility check on every new iPhone and Android release.
- Store deadlines put in a calendar and met before they arrive.
- Crashes watched rather than discovered by customers.
- Store reviews read and summarised once a month.
- A two business day response time.
Worth it only if the app genuinely carries money. If it does not, we will say so and you should not buy this.
What a rescue does not include
This list goes in the contract as written. It is here first because the fastest way to waste both our time is to find out in week three that we meant different things.
- New features. Making the existing thing work is one job; adding to it is another.
- A redesign. The screens stay as they are, apart from what breaks on current screen sizes.
- Rewriting the app from scratch. If the report says that is the cheaper route, it is priced separately.
- Anything at all if the source code cannot be found. This is the single biggest stopper and the report looks for it first.
- A guarantee that Apple or Google will approve the release. Known rejection reasons are closed, and one resubmission is included.
- Pressing the submit button. That is yours to press, from your own account.
- Advertising, store optimisation, and user acquisition.
- Writing your legal texts. We will point at anything that looks risky, but we do not approve it.
If your app is a rented copy, say so and save the $500
A large share of business apps are not really yours. They are one tenant's copy of a platform that hundreds of other businesses also use, with your logo on the front. Booking systems, gym platforms and clinic systems are often sold this way.
When that is the case there is no code for anyone to repair, and nobody outside that platform can fix your app, us included. What you have instead is a supplier conversation and a decision about whether to stay. Selling you a repair in that situation would be selling you something you cannot buy.
There is a real option on the other side of that decision, and it is a different job from the one described above: leaving the rented copy and moving onto an app you actually own. That is a build rather than a rescue, it is quoted separately, and what it would involve for you is one of the things the status report sets out.
The report checks whose code it is before anything else, and tells you on day one, so you find out which conversation you are in before you spend anything more.
How it runs
You talk to one person
You deal directly with the developer doing the work. There is no account manager in between passing messages along, and no weekly meeting whose purpose is the meeting.
You keep everything
Store accounts in your company's name, source code in a repository you control, a written handover record at the end. We stay only as an invited collaborator you can remove.
We build and run our own apps
Codixus ships apps under its own name on both stores, so release rules, review rejections and store deadlines are routine here rather than research. You can look at them on the products page.
Payment
The report is paid in one go. A rescue is half at the start and half before the release goes to the stores. There is no retainer and nothing renews by itself.
Questions people actually ask
Other things we build
Rescue work is for an app that already exists. If you are starting something new instead, these are the three shapes that work take most often.
AI Mobile App Development
New AI-native mobile products, designed and built end to end.
React Native Development
One codebase shipping to iPhone and Android, on the stack we run across our own portfolio.
Subscription App Development
Apps where the money arrives monthly, with the billing wired up correctly the first time.
Start with the report
Send us the name of your app. In two business days you get one page telling you which phones it opens on, what the stores are about to do about it, and who actually holds the keys. Whatever you decide afterwards, that page is yours.