How Much Does It Cost to Maintain an App?

If you have worked hard to develop a relevant and reliable application, it’s crucial to ensure that the app doesn’t become outdated post-deployment. Ignoring app maintenance means pushing your customers to use faulty and outdated apps, which can drive them to take their business elsewhere. Many product owners wonder, “How much does it cost to maintain an app?” This question is vital, as even the app stores require you to submit an updated application; otherwise, they may remove it from their platform. Therefore, partnering with an app development company can help you keep your application updated and functional. 

Businesses tend to overlook app maintenance to save costs. However, it is not just about keeping your app stable and secure but also about nurturing and expanding your business. Therefore, mobile app maintenance is considered an equally important investment as application development. When your application development is completed and released to the public, its journey has just begun.  

The app market is highly competitive as the fluctuation in the number of new apps added to app stores is noticeable. This fluctuation in the number of new apps added to app stores highlights the market’s competitive nature. In such a saturated market environment, regular maintenance of the app is important to ensure that your app remains functional, relevant, and appealing to users. 

According to Pixalate’s Q2 2024, delisted mobile apps report: 1.1M Google Play store apps were removed and 74% of delisted apps were abandoned (not updated in over two years) in Q2 2024, compared to 25% in Q2 2023. Lack of regular updates and maintenance can result in the delisting of apps from the app store, adversely affecting the business. 

The quantity of unmaintained apps is evidence that this stage of app development is the most crucial.  Now that we are aware of the consequences of neglecting app maintenance, let’s delve into app maintenance, its types, costs, and best practices in detail. This article sheds some light on the importance of app maintenance. Then we discuss various types of maintenance, its best practices, and the associated costs associated with them. We also provide insights on effectively maintaining your application at affordable rates. First, we will explore the significance of mobile app support and maintenance.

1. Why App Maintenance is Important?

Regular maintenance can fix bugs, and improve the user interface, user experience, and more. Investing in high-quality app maintenance services may increase your user retention rate by providing a superior app experience.

Let’s delve further into the importance of mobile app maintenance:

1.1 To Enhance User Experience

Long-term maintenance helps you identify what your users like about your app and what issues they are facing. You can also determine their problem by reading user reviews and feedback. Accordingly, you can improve the app’s usability during maintenance to offer a better experience.

1.2 To Improve User Retention

App maintenance is meant for specific purposes of removing bugs, improving speed and performance, integrating new features, and more. Doing this would help you maintain the value your app offers to the users. And when they get a valuable experience, users keep coming back for more. Consistently providing value through your app has the potential to turn visitors into loyal fans or returning customers.

1.3 To Fix Bugs and Improve App Performance

The number of bugs tends to increase as the number of users grows. Your app performance may lag with an increased number of operations or a larger database. This demands additional support and maintenance. Having a proper app maintenance plan in place can help you avoid most bugs and quickly fix any that arise. Maintenance also ensures that your app is compatible with different mobile environments, such as screen sizes, and operating systems. This helps reach a larger audience and provides optimal performance to all. 

1.4 To Stay Competitive 

In a competitive market, businesses must monitor the latest trends and invest in them as needed. Maintaining the mobile application helps you undertake necessary modifications and updates to keep up with the shifting market and changing user requirements. 

1.5 To Reduce Downtime 

Real-time support is required in the face of a technical glitch or bugs. It is essential to help users regain operational access to the application. Regular app maintenance leads to reduced downtime which allows users to enjoy the product or services uninterruptedly. User engagement and productivity are boosted when users can access your app seamlessly on their preferred devices.

1.6 To Ensure Your App is Secure Against Lagging Problems

Smartphone manufacturers frequently release software and hardware updates. Consequently, upcoming updates could potentially disrupt your app. Your app may contain security vulnerabilities, bugs, or UI/UX issues due to these updates. Regularly maintaining your application can help you avoid encountering these issues unexpectedly.

1.7 To Add New Features and Functionalities

Maintenance provides an opportunity to add new features and functionalities to your application. This enables you to release an updated version that can keep up with the latest trends and user requirements. On top of adding, and testing new features, app maintenance also enables you to review all the existing features. 

1.8 To Get a Higher Return on Investment

Consistent app updates have several positive effects on your bottom line, including increasing your return on investment. It is also beneficial to regularly seek out novel approaches to reduce expenses and attract new customers. By addressing the occasional hiccup, you may prolong the time frame over which you pay for bug fixes.

1.9 To Reduce Income Losses

There might be serious financial consequences for any app downtime. Downtime has led to substantial revenue losses for major corporations including Bank of America Online Banking, Blackberry, and Amazon Web Services.

2. Types of Mobile App Maintenance

Before identifying the cost of mobile app maintenance, it’s important to understand the various types of mobile app maintenance. Check out the following list to understand the differences in detail.

2.1 Adaptive Maintenance

Maintenance that adapts to new technologies is essential for keeping your app up-to-date. It may be necessary to update the app so that it functions properly with the latest OS, hardware, and any other software that may influence the app’s functionality.

2.2 Emergency Maintenance

Emergency maintenance is required because of sudden and pressing issues that might arise. Unpredictable and potentially crippling to your app’s functionality, these problems highlight the importance of prompt resolution to maintain a consistent user experience.

2.3 Preventive Maintenance

This approach to maintenance seeks to enhance the app’s maintainability by lowering its complexity and preventing potential faults from occurring. Code refactoring, optimization, and documentation updates are all examples of preventative actions that may boost an app’s performance and head off potential problems.

2.4 Perfective Maintenance

Your app has to be flexible enough to adjust to the changing needs of your users and the rising popularity of new mobile capabilities. Performing perfective maintenance means being responsive to user feedback and making appropriate changes to the app’s source code to continuously improve the user experience.

2.5 Corrective Maintenance

During corrective maintenance, any problems or deficiencies in the app’s operations are fixed. To ensure the program performs as intended, problems with its design, code, and logic must be addressed.

Owners of apps would be well advised to familiarize themselves with these types of maintenance tasks to better plan and allocate resources. To maintain the lifetime and efficacy of your app, you should take into account these various maintenance requirements when determining the expenses of app maintenance.

3. How Much Does it Cost to Maintain an App?

You’ll need to allocate funds to various parts of app maintenance. Here, we’ll break down the many aspects that affect the cost of app maintenance.

This can help you calculate the likely price of performing various types of routine maintenance. See the breakdown below.

App Maintenance Type	Apx. Costs
Hosting Charges	$70 to $320 Per Month
Bug fixes and updates	$25 to $100 Per Service or Per Bug
3rd party services (such as mail and SMS)	$30 to $70 per month for notification emails & SMS services
API Integration	$1000 to $5000 per year
IT Support	$10k to $30k Per Year
Analytics	Free & Paid Services
Payment Gateways	$50 to $150 per month
Technical Intervention	$35 to $50 Per Hour

We’ll go over the costs associated with mobile app maintenance so you can see why and when it’s necessary to make that financial commitment.

3.1 Costs Related to Deploying Your App Host

The amount of server resources allocated to your app will depend on factors such as how much data your app processes, including movies, music, or text.

If you need to increase the capabilities of your server’s resources, you will need to spend more. In a nutshell, monthly costs for an app hosting server might range from $70 to $320.

If you’re looking to cut down on server expenses, consider one of the many cloud-based hosting choices available, like Azure and AWS.

3.2 Bug Fixing and Updates

Addressing bugs is a necessary step in creating a mobile app, but keeping your app up-to-date is the best way to make it run smoothly and provide the best experience for your users. Patching issues or adding new features to a program, however, will not cost you anything. The complexity of the system and the type of updates being implemented both play a role.

If it’s a minor problem that needs fixing,  you should expect to pay roughly $25 to $100. If, on the other hand, you need to upgrade a significant functional feature, the price tag jumps to $1000–$2000 because it will take developers 2–3 weeks to fix.

3.3 Service Functionality for Enhanced User Experience

Services such as sending push notifications, emails, SMS, and in-app conversations to your app’s users fall under this category. You’ll need to pay a monthly fee for the use of third-party integration services to accomplish this.

To provide the highest quality user experience possible, it is estimated that you will need to spend roughly $30 to $70 per month for notification emails & SMS services and functional services for your app.

3.4 The Use of an API to Ensure Smooth Operation

Investment in tracking third-party integration services or API services utilized in your app is essential, just as it is with functional services. For instance, You may have implemented Facebook Login to quickly access your social network accounts or Google Maps Interaction to get real-time directions.

If the API ever gets updated or altered in any way, your app will need to be updated as well. Therefore, it is possible to spend $1000 to $5000 a year on API upkeep.

3.5 IT Support

You probably know that both iOS and Android receive regular upgrades. When releasing your app for these platforms, keep in mind that you’ll need to update it often to ensure that it works with the latest versions of the corresponding operating systems.

Spending roughly $10k to $30k annually on updates and maintenance is necessary due to the aforementioned changes in OS systems and making the app compliant.

3.6 Using App Analytics for Business Monitoring

Once your app is live, you must regularly track usage and engagement to learn what features are most valued by users and which ones are disregarded. You will monitor interest and revenue growth, as well as retention and turnover, to ensure the continued success of your app.

Google Analytics and similar analytics technologies make it possible to keep tabs on crashes, defects, and other malfunctions. There are two pricing tiers: a free tier that lacks advanced features and a premium tier that, for $150,000 annually, provides access to advanced features and vital insights.

3.7 Payment Gateways

Your app needs a monthly membership charge whether it is an online shopping app, a food delivery app, or an app that uses a payment gateway to accept online payments.

This might cost as much as $50 to $150 a month, and there would be a fee associated with each transaction processed by your app.

3.8 Technical Intervention Cost

In most cases, this expense is ignored by app developers when estimating ongoing upkeep fees. IT-specific intervention monitoring and operation is, nevertheless, an integral aspect of the app maintenance life cycle.

If your company already has a mobile app development team, you may skip the cost of annual app updates. Technical intervention expenses might range from $35 to $50 per hour if you want to outsource app maintenance services.

It’s important to note that the location of the mobile app developers might affect the price of the technical intervention. 

4. Mobile App Maintenance Best Practices

Let’s talk about the best way to provide app assistance while reducing app maintenance costs to a minimum. Establishing a regular schedule for maintenance tasks is the first step. Make sure you and your supplier commit to a regular timetable. Establish a routine that includes doing things like:

• Testing, and bug fixes.
• Upgrading to support operating system upgrades.
• Refreshes to the library’s collection.
• Modifying existing code to make it better.
• Checks for safety.

It’s crucial to plan for this because each of these things develops at a different rate. Check the app’s metrics after making adjustments to see how the upkeep affects the app’s technical efficiency, customer experience, and usage patterns.

5. Tips to Reduce Mobile App Maintenance Cost 

You may know the variables that factor into the costs of maintaining your application. But do you know how to reduce your costs? 

Well, here are a few suggestions from our experts that could help you bring down the app maintenance costs.

5.1 Choosing the Appropriate Growth Strategy

How much time and money you spend maintaining an app for iOS or Android might be affected by whatever platform you choose. There are now two categories of app development frameworks:

• Native App Development
• Hybrid App Development

Native apps focus exclusively on a specific platform, such as iOS or Android. This means that developers must create separate native apps for each operating system. However, once installed, native apps typically offer superior performance and take up less storage space. Because their creators focus solely on designing them for a single OS, these programs can provide superior functionality. However, native applications have two different maintenance costs: one for iOS and one for Android.

Hybrid programs, as the name implies, are compatible with many operating systems. Although it makes sense to save both time and money by developing a single app that can run on several platforms, you may avoid the hassle of maintaining several applications by creating a single hybrid app that can provide services across different platforms with a subset of their functionality. Even in the very long run, you are making financial headway by avoiding expenditure. Hybrid applications are preferable due to the savings in app maintenance costs they provide.

5.2 Focus on Constructing an MVP App

An MVP is a version of a software program that developers create with as few features and as little of the user interface as possible. Therefore, adding more features that no one will ever use might raise the app’s file size, load time, and crash frequency. Therefore, you should build a functional app with useful features for your target audience.

When you have customer input, you may decide what features to add. Alternatively, if it doesn’t negatively impact the app’s performance, you may keep an eye on the competition and schedule improvements appropriately.

5.3 Keeping up With Current Trends in Technology

Keeping up with current technological advancements is the best approach to lessen the frequency of maintenance interruptions.

6. Let’s Update Your Mobile App

We assume you found the solution to the question “How much does it cost to maintain an app?” from this blog. With so many variables to consider, settling on an app maintenance budget has never been simpler. Whether it’s fixing bugs, adding new features, integrating an API, or analyzing app users, all you have to do is zoom in on the part of the program you want to update.

Get in contact with our specialists if you need assistance calculating the price of maintenance. We’ll analyze to find the problematic areas of your app and provide you with an estimate of the necessary service. 

FAQs

What comprises app maintenance?

Routine examinations of security, correction of bugs, code refining, additional feature development, design improvement, enhancing third-party services, etc., are all components of app maintenance.

How much time does app maintenance require?

A mobile app requires maintenance every 7 days to 2 months. The intricacy of the app’s maintenance is a major factor in this variety. If it turns out to be a minor issue, correcting it shouldn’t take more than a week. If you wish to add new features or need any complicated updates to your software, however, that process might take up to 8 weeks.

How can I estimate app maintenance and support costs?

Asking your app outsourcing partners about estimated service expenses is the easiest approach to plan. They have a lot of expertise in the field of mobile app maintenance and can give you a quote depending on the specifics of your project, such as its scale, the technologies to be used, and so on.

How much does the maintenance of a multi-platform app cost?

You may spend between $15,000 and $25,000 per year on cross-platform app maintenance. A cross-platform program works on more than one operating system. Since you’ll need to develop and maintain many apps for various platforms, the cost of maintaining a cross-platform app will be higher.

The intricacy of the bug issues, the addition of new features or capabilities, user statistics, and API integration are only a few of the aspects that might affect the maintenance cost range.