Elitek – eCommerce agency for Magento and Shopware
Service

Store rescue & takeover

Inherited a Magento or Shopware store that is slow, buggy or abandoned by its previous agency? We audit the codebase, stabilise it and take over ongoing development — without the drama.
Request a store audit

When a store needs rescuing

Stores rarely fail overnight. They get slower, harder to change and more expensive to run, until one day nobody wants to touch the code. Whether the original developer disappeared, the team that built it moved on, or years of quick fixes piled up, the result is the same: a shop that holds the business back instead of growing it.

We take over stores like this regularly. First we find out exactly what you have, then we make it stable, then we improve it — in that order, with no surprises along the way.

Signs it is time to hand the store over

  • Pages load slowly and conversion keeps dropping
  • Every change breaks something else, and nobody is sure why
  • The previous developer is unreachable or unwilling to continue
  • Nobody has documentation, and access or credentials are incomplete
  • Security patches and platform updates have been skipped for months or years
  • The store has been hacked, defaced or flagged as unsafe by Google
  • Suspicious orders, injected scripts or card-skimming warnings from your payment provider
  • Simple requests take weeks and cost more than they should

How the takeover works

We start with an audit, not a promise. You get a clear picture of the store’s condition and a prioritised plan before committing to ongoing work.

Code & performance audit

A full technical review of what you actually have: platform version, custom code, third-party extensions, server setup and database health.

→What is slowing the store down, measured not guessed
→Which extensions and customisations are safe to keep
→Security gaps, missing patches and upgrade risks

Technical SEO audit

A review of how well search engines can crawl, index and render the store, so visibility problems get fixed at the code level.

→Indexing, URL structure and technical SEO issues
→Core Web Vitals and how they affect rankings
→Structured data, sitemaps, canonicals and redirect handling

Once the audit is done you get a written report with a prioritised roadmap: what must be fixed now, what should be improved next, and what can wait. You decide how far to go from there.

Then we stabilise and improve

Most rescues follow the same path. We fix the urgent problems first — performance, security, anything breaking orders — then get the codebase into a state where changes are safe again. From there it becomes normal development: new features, integrations and steady improvement under an SLA.

What’s included

One team covers the whole takeover, from first audit to long-term development.

01

Full store audit

Code, performance, security, SEO and infrastructure reviewed and documented, with findings ranked by business impact.

02

Handover & access recovery

We collect and document hosting, repository, domain and third-party access, so you own every part of your store again.

03

Emergency stabilisation

Urgent fixes first: broken checkout, failing orders, security holes and the performance problems costing you sales today.

04

Speed optimisation

We track down what is actually slow: high TTFB, long page load times, slow database queries and missing indexes, misconfigured caching, and heavy front-end assets — then fix each one and measure the response times before and after.

05

Platform & security updates

Bringing Magento or Shopware back onto a supported version, with patches applied and a plan to stay current.

06

Ongoing development & SLA

Once stable, we continue as your development partner with a tailor-made SLA, priority response and continuous improvement.

07

AI-assisted code review

We use AI tooling alongside manual review to scan large, unfamiliar codebases faster — surfacing dead code, risky patterns and undocumented customisations that would otherwise take weeks to find.

Need someone to take over?

Tell us what platform you are on and what is going wrong. We’ll start with an audit and come back with a clear picture and a prioritised plan.

FAQ Common questions

Questions we get asked

Straight answers on audits, taking over from another agency, access recovery and timelines.

Can you take over a store built by another agency?

Yes — this is a large part of what we do. We start with an audit of the existing codebase and infrastructure, document what is there, and take over development from that point. You do not need the previous developer’s cooperation, only access to the hosting, repository and domain.

Can you take over our shop also without a code audit?

Yes. If something is urgent we can take over straight away, fix what is breaking first, and then improve the store step by step. The audit is only there to give you the full picture before you commit — it is not a condition for us starting work. In practice we end up reviewing the code as we go either way.

What if we do not have access to our own hosting or code?

We help you recover it. Domains, hosting accounts, repositories and third-party services are usually recoverable through the registrar or provider with proof of ownership. Where code is missing entirely, we can extract it from the live server and put it under version control.

What does a store audit include?

A technical review of the platform version, custom code, extensions, server setup and database, plus performance measurement and a technical SEO review. You get a written report with findings ranked by business impact and a prioritised roadmap.

How much does a store audit cost?

The audit is scoped and priced according to the size and complexity of the store — how much custom code and how many extensions are in play, and how deep the infrastructure review needs to go. Get in touch with your platform and store details and we’ll come back with a fixed scope and price.

Can you fix a slow Magento store?

Yes. Slow stores are one of the most common reasons clients come to us. We profile the store to find the real bottlenecks — usually missing or misconfigured caching, slow database queries and missing indexes, heavy or badly written extensions, and server configuration — then fix them and measure the response times before and after.

Do you also support Magento 1 stores?

Magento 1 reached end of life and no longer receives security patches, so we do not recommend staying on it. We can stabilise a Magento 1 store short term, but the sensible path is a migration to Magento 2 — which we do regularly, keeping products, customers, orders and SEO structure intact.

What happens after the store is stable?

We continue as your development partner under a tailor-made SLA: priority response times, ongoing platform and security updates, and continuous improvement work — new features, integrations and conversion optimisation.