Lots of business owners seem baffled when they learn that their spending doesn’t end after their application goes live. Indeed, why should you keep on paying when your software is up and running, all necessary features have been implemented, and there are no visible bugs that need fixing? Now that the number of people willing to develop their applications is growing by the day, similar questions come up fairly often. And we think it’s a good idea to figure out how much money you will possibly need to spend to maintain your app and what you can get in return.
Maintenance Costs
If you want your application to operate properly and generate stable income, you should be mindful of maintenance costs. Unless you’re a professional programmer who has access to a wide variety of app testing, scaling, and debugging tools and extensible experience in app development, you’ll need to hire someone who will ensure your app operates as intended. No matter what company or individual developers help you with the development process, there’s no way you can avoid paying maintenance. Otherwise, your app, just like any living thing, will die without proper support and care. And by ‘support’ and ‘care’ we mean regular updates, timely corrections of faults, performance improvements, security enhancement, and the like.
How Much Does It Cost To Maintain Your App?
Lots of business owners beat their brains out trying to figure out how much they will actually need to fork out on their app maintenance. Well, it’s hard to say for sure. The answer to the question largely depends on how it was built or, more specifically, what tools were employed for that. Thus, some frameworks allow you to save much on maintenance. (To learn more, see the article at https://cutt.ly/NzgyET2.) What’s more, you can save your hard-earned dollars, if you go with a fixed monthly pricing plan which will cover all the essential maintenance costs. Just be sure to discuss this with your developers in advance.
To calculate the approximate figure you’ll need to put aside for maintaining your app, budget about 20-25% of the initial development cost. So, if your app came in at, say, $50,000, you can reasonably expect to spend $10,000 annually to keep it up to date.
Benefits You Get
Building an app that won’t scale is a no-go for your business. Only an app that keeps up with the latest tech trends and caters for the constantly changing user needs can remain competitive and interesting to customers. If you invest enough money in maintaining your product, you’ll be able to publish new content instantly and thus boost your app downloads. You’ll be able to post new articles, update existing content, and add new screens in the blink of an eye. What’s more, you can implement or further improve the messaging features of your app. Push notifications, for example, is a great way to keep your users constantly engaged with your app. You can inform them of special offers, discounts, or new features via this convenient system. If you also want to schedule messages in advance, create location, or send your users to a specific app screen after receiving your message, make sure to discuss it with your developers.
Another benefit you can receive if you don’t skimp on maintenance is the ability to track important stats for your software. With real-time analytics, you can get useful insights about how your users interact with your app and how they actually find it online. You can also employ the latest AI and IoT-powered tools that help app owners detect frauds, target individual customers, optimize customer satisfaction, and much more. You will be able to get hold of the latest time-sensitive customer data and use it to your advantage, uncover the weak points in your marketing campaign, improve your app’s overall performance and profitability, and carry out split app testing whenever needed.
Now you see how important it is to allocate costs for efficient and timely app maintenance. Make sure to find professional developers that have extensive experience not only in developing, but also scaling, and testing different types of business software. Negotiate costs and possible pricing plans in advance and get the most downloads for your app.
