App Maintenance Cost

App maintenance cost is what you pay every year to keep an app working after it is launched. Most people budget for the build and stop there. Over five years the build is usually the smaller number. An app that nobody touches does not sit still and stay fine. It breaks slowly, and then all at once.

Start with the two stores, because they are the easiest to forget. Apple charges for a developer account every year, and if the payment stops your app leaves the iPhone store. Google charges once, when you open the account. Both stores review the app again with every update you send, and both change their rules several times a year. A rule you ignored in March can pull your app down in November.

Then there are the phones themselves. Apple and Google each release a new phone system once a year, usually in autumn, and millions of people install it within weeks. Something in your app almost always behaves differently afterwards. A screen that will not scroll. A camera that will not open. A login that goes round in circles. Fixing that is not a new feature, and you pay for it anyway. Linkysoft tests every app it looks after on the new system before the public gets it, which is cheaper than reading about it in the store reviews.

An app also talks to a server, and the server has a monthly bill, backups and a security certificate that expires. Someone has to answer when it stops responding at nine in the morning. Add the human side, which people forget entirely. Reviews that need a reply. One customer who cannot sign in. A crash that only happens on one cheap phone in one country. Teams who would rather not run a machine themselves put that part on Hostrena and keep the bill predictable.

A fair yearly figure is fifteen to twenty percent of what the build cost. An app built for ten thousand needs about two thousand a year to stay alive. Ask any supplier what their number covers and, more useful, what it does not. Linkysoft puts that yearly figure inside the mobile app development quote from the start, because an owner who is surprised in year two stops paying, and an app that stops being maintained quietly stops working.