Application maintenance: what it includes and what it costs per year

An application in production is like a shop open to the public: it has to be kept clean, safe and in good order even if you don’t change the décor. Many development quotes don’t mention it, and that is a mistake: the cost of the first year includes building the app and maintaining it.

What maintenance includes

• Hosting and infrastructure: servers or cloud services, domain and certificates.
• Automatic backups, and checking now and then that they can be restored.
• Security updates to the system, the libraries and the code itself.
• Monitoring: knowing something is failing before a customer tells you.
• Fixing bugs that appear with real use.
• Small improvements and tweaks, within a number of hours a month or quoted separately.
• Adapting to outside changes: new versions of iOS and Android, changes in payment or third-party APIs.

What drives the cost

• The size and complexity of the app: more features and integrations, more to keep an eye on.
• The number of users and the traffic, which set the infrastructure.
• The level of service: response in office hours or 24/7 cover, and how quickly.
• Whether there is a mobile app in the stores, which has to keep pace with Apple and Google.
• The hours of improvements you want included each month.

What happens if it isn’t maintained

At first, nothing. Over time, libraries stop receiving security patches, a phone update breaks a screen, a backup nobody checked can’t be restored or a provider changes its API. Fixing everything at once costs much more than having maintained it, and sometimes means rebuilding whole parts.

Questions before signing up for maintenance

• What is included in the fee and what is charged separately?
• How quickly do they respond to a serious incident, and at what times?
• Where are the backups and how often are they tested?
• Is there a minimum term? What do I get if I change provider?
• Can they maintain an app built by another company?

At BeInClouds maintenance comes with fixed monthly fees and no minimum term, and if we build your app the first months are included in the quote. The plans and their current prices are on the operations and maintenance page. If your app was built by another provider, we audit it first and tell you its real state.