I build websites for a living and sometimes people don't pay their bills. Their website going down is usually not a big deal (sometimes they don't notice for months!). But their email, now THAT is a show stopper every time (instant payment).
As much as I want to side with the developers I think they are exposing themselves to legal repercussions and made their situation worse.
I did this like 20yrs ago. Would ask him for payment and he would go quiet until he needed changes. I made the changes and he would be like oohhh I need to pay you don't I! I give the details and he goes quiet again until he needed more changes
Less-than-fully-reputable shared hosting providers have been doing a variation on this for decades. Although normally in the form of a pop-up or banner at the top of the page.
When I worked for a hosting provider, an overdue account would get daily emails for up to a month. After a month, the site would be disabled (404) or the VPS would be turned off. After three months, the site/VPS would be archived. After one year, the archive was deleted.
Astonishingly, there was always a fairly steady stream of customers who would come back over a year later and ask for their site to be restored, or to get a copy of it. I never enjoyed being the person who had to give them the bad news of the consequences of their choices.
301 to a competitor site.
I see such behavior from time to time but feels off-taste IMHO. It's almost as if would be more professional if they worked with the Italian mafia to coerce for payment(not that I approve such thing).
If contract broken, sue them. Why throwing a scene?
This is why as an indie business you need business insurances that would pay out in cases like this.
I doubt anyone would work with this dev in the future, but lol it’s still quite funny.
If someone doesn't pay you, stop providing the service.
A message like this on a client website doesn't do what you think it's going to do.
Good (if legit)
is it legal? turn it off instead of doing that, because it damages the brand
I have no idea what the contract says, what was paid, or any of the other conversations they've had. All I see is someone complaining publicly about a private matter. When that happens, I assume they're wrong.
Normal people don't air petty grievances on the internet. They use the courts and other mechanisms.
According to another comment, the business is dissolved. They don't care if their site goes down. So this guy is looking unprofessional for nothing.
This probably explains why they're not paying: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
> Company status: Dissolved
> Dissolved on 16 December 2025
His other company:
> Company status: Liquidation
People are now attacking the guy on Instagram because I guess the developer or someone, made a Tiktok video about it.