What should I do if the application owner has left the company and I need to transfer ownership?

Issue

The owner/a collaborator on this app has left the company now/is no longer working here/was paid to build this for me. I need to transfer the app/s to my/an org account, but I can't do that since their email is either inactive or is in use by that user. Can you transfer the app to me?

Resolution

In this case, we recommend reaching out to the owner of the app to have them initiate the transfer to a different account. We can not do this on request as we have to protect the ownership of applications very carefully.

If the owner's account is no longer active and is a company email address, you may be able to create a new account temporarily for that address to receive a password reset email. You might instead be able to set it up to redirect to your account. You may need to contact your IT department to set up that email address again.

If the account was truly a personal account with a non-company email address, your options are limited if you're unable to contact the owner to initiate a transfer. We can help you to recover any custom domains, and if you have access to the app as a collaborator you can retrieve the database and code. You can even fork the app to a new one to simplify the process. You'll need to select a new name for the app as that is unique.

To help prevent this in the future, we recommend moving any company-owned apps to a Heroku Team, which offer much more flexibility in access and ownership than having individual accounts own apps.

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