How Much Does it Cost to Maintain An App?
- Mobile
- July 10, 2020
Seeing an application go live after several months of effort you have put on its software development and design work gives you a mind-blowing feeling. However, if you think your all work has been completed with app development, publishing in the app store or play store, and marketing it amazingly for alluring clients, you are wrong.
After building a mobile app successfully, you must maintain it. And app maintenance draws some extra costs. Moreover, inadequate app maintenance can be a reason behind an app failure.
Why Is App Maintenance Necessitous?
Focusing on app maintenance will remunerate in the long run. It has proven that increasing the app retention rates by only 5% increases the profits of an organization by anywhere between 25% and 95%. Maintaining an app is necessitous as each app on the store requires it for surviving.
Things like performance requirements, changes in design popularity, new device launches, new operating system launches are some purposes for having an app maintenance strategy before starting the development process. So, no matter how properly you developed an app, you always need to maintain it.
Factors to Consider For Calculating Mobile App Maintenance Cost
Many examples of app development cost analysis are available online, but you can get puzzled instead of being guided if you check them. Some areas can highly impact your app development cost.
It can be said that yearly average app maintenance expenses can be calculated at 15 to 20% of the total development expenses invested in launching the MVP model of your app.
Here are the top 3 factors that you must ponder for estimating mobile app maintenance cost:
1. Development Team Spot
Costs of app development are different across the globe. The USA has the highest rates. The highest rates can be expected in Switzerland in Europe, whereas Eastern and Central Europe have one of the lowest rates. When you hire mobile app developers, it’s important to note that developers in certain regions may outperform others in terms of quality and expertise, despite lower costs.
2. Software Complication
Your app maintenance costs will increase if your app gets more screens and features. The app-building technology you select also plays a pivotal role. If you built 2 separate native apps for Android and iOS, your maintenance could be costlier than using a cross-platform solution like React Native.
The number of third-party integrations is another factor to ponder. If your application is highly connected with external services like accounting systems, social media, or payment platforms, you can anticipate more maintenance costs.
3. Design of the App
To keep affordable maintenance costs, you must hire experienced software designers in the first phases of the app-building. If your app design is not good, it can cost you more maintenance expenses in the long run.
So, employ experienced developers who know the ways of managing legacy code and design so that they can boost your product gradually at the time of app maintenance.
How Much Does It Cost For App Maintenance?
It’s not only an app development expense but the maintenance cost also. You should be ready before going for building an app. The app maintenance cost varies from app to app. On average, it can cost you nearly 20% of your actual expenses of mobile app development.
Things to Remember While Considering App Maintenance Costs
Here are some factors that you should remember while pondering the expenses of maintaining an application:
1. Analytics
Tools like Google Analytics offer lots of data to help you make the right decisions for tracking users’ usage and get reports that give your answers. Free tools are available but advanced tools give more info.
It’s also the expense in time as you will require somebody for spending time applying this and checking everything.
Analytics is also essential for performance problems like glitches, crashes, and other bugs. You will need to troubleshoot these as they come up for different purposes beyond only the launches of new OS versions.
2. Hosting
You require paying the database and backend of your app hosted for your app to perform well. Many hosting options are there like a cloud-based environment. AWS (Amazon Web Services) is one of the cloud services that will be less costly as you just pay for your usage and there will be less set up and maintenance expense of the server.
3. Third-party
When you use something in your app that is coming from somebody else, you will need to pay for it monthly. For instance, you will need to pay for a licensed technology that you utilize.
4. Bugs and Updates
Updates are important with every technology. Every app gets updated versions. Simply open the store and check the description, you will find the required updates there. These updates’ costs rely on many factors.
In case you just have a bug that should be solved in the line of code, it can cost you nearly $50. If you want to update the whole performance aspect that could take many weeks for troubleshooting, the updates can take almost $1000 to $2000. Also, it relies on the app size and how properly it functions.
5. Marketing
You need user engagement and marketing functions to get and retain users. Many free things are there to do, but paying a bit can get your name out there.
You can invest from $100 to $250000 in marketing based on your budget and activities you require. A good marketing team can customize a marketing plan as per your application and budget.
6. Client Support
Listen to your users to be successful truly. Address every user complaint. Hire a dedicated employee for responding to users and get good reviews. This will continuously cost you also but not a lot.
7. App Security
Ensuring your app security is another essential maintenance cost you must budget for. You need to ponder 2 areas – legally-imposed changes and ongoing security optimization. To ensure you won’t put sensitive user data in danger, developers will require tracking all privacy updates or changes of the third-party integrations.
Leaving an update unidentified could bring a security violation. Hence, you will require remembering legal changes like GDPR that shake-up always the way the information is processed and safeguarded worldwide.
How to Lower App Development and Maintenance Costs
Costs of app development and maintenance are based on different factors. However, developers can follow these tricks to cut down these expenses:
1. Investment in the Right App Development Platform
You can select either a Native or Hybrid app development platform. Native offers a stable app for users and has better availability of resources of the smartphone devices. So, the app will perform quicker and lighter on a device. These services are more dependable in terms of performance and features.
You will need to maintain at least 2 apps for 2 different platforms incorporating iOS and Android. So, your budget will increase. You can better invest in a hybrid app that incorporates the best HTML5 offerings and combines the best of the native platforms.
2. Incorporate the Best Features the Users Will Utilize
Users don’t use all app features. So, you should better invest in the things they will only use. This helps reduce the expense and efforts of your developers while developing an app. Your developer should assess and research the users’ concerns to get the best features.
3. Hire a Dedicated Person for Maintenance Tasks
You can do all these maintenance tasks on your own and employing a dedicated person can cost you more for sure. However, it’s not at all possible to do everything on your own as you always need a team.
4. Discuss a Maintenance Strategy with App Development Team
This is the best solution among all. The team can give app maintenance as per your need. So, discuss all choices and expenses related to them earlier so you know the complete scope cost and not only the app development expenses. If you won’t maintain your app, don’t waste your time with development.
Wrapping Up
Focusing on your app’s functionality after its release is important to get a scope on the market. While working on the app maintenance budget, ensure to incorporate not just infrastructural expenses like third-party integrations, hosting, or servers.
Keep in mind the roles of your client service, developers, marketers, and QAs to keep your app competitive. Ensure to keep your app at its best, so the users want to return for more.
