The journey of a mobile app doesn’t end at launch; in fact, it’s just the beginning. Even the most well-conceived apps face the inevitable reality of bugs and glitches post-launch.
If left unresolved, these issues can impact user experience, invite poor reviews, and lead to a dwindling user base. This is where regular app maintenance comes in—not just as an important task, but as a critical necessity.
However, a key question to ponder is: what does this maintenance entail, and more importantly, how much does it cost in 2024?
Dive into this comprehensive guide to uncover the importance, types, and costs of mobile app maintenance. Let’s ensure your app continues to shine brightly in the ever-competitive mobile app universe.
App Maintenance Cost – Setting the Context
Today, mobile apps fuel our digital world. By 2025, the number of smartphone users in the US is predicted to surge to 311 million, presenting an enormous opportunity for app developers.
When it comes to mobile apps, there is a heavy emphasis on the coding phase.
However, those who ideate and develop apps understand that behind the glamour of development lies a rigorous saga of effort and innovation.
This saga involves successfully publishing your app on Google Play or the Apple App Store, and strategically marketing it.
Does the story end with development?
Definitely not!
A resilient app demands a robust maintenance plan, a process not unlike maintaining our electronic devices. Monitoring performance and ensuring users receive regular updates is crucial.
Consider this: You’re engrossed in an edge-of-your-seat movie, and the screen abruptly goes blank. Naturally, you’d be frustrated, and if you’ve paid for the experience, you’d likely demand a refund.
The same principle applies to a compelling mobile app—users expect a seamless experience devoid of disruptions.
Regular app maintenance is key to preventing such interruptions, and this does incur additional costs. Neglecting mobile app maintenance could be a cause of your app’s failure, leading to the dreaded app uninstalls.
Statistics reveal that while the number of new mobile apps appearing in the store is growing, the removal of obsolete apps is also a growing concern.
Why Maintaining and Updating Mobile Apps Matter
As a business owner, prioritizing long-term maintenance is essential to prevent your app from becoming outdated.
1. Ensuring Mobile Apps Stay Updated and Reducing Uninstalls
It's crucial to stay attuned to user preferences and tailor features that resonate with their likes and dislikes.
Studies reveal that over 71% of users uninstall apps due to intrusive notifications.
This underscores how highly users value functionality and benefits, leading them to delete your app if it doesn't meet their expectations.
Therefore, it's vital to continually monitor user preferences and expectations—and update your app accordingly.
App stores enforce stringent quality guidelines, and if your app listing falls short, it may be rejected.
A decline in your app’s rankings could prompt platforms to remove your app during their periodic cleanups. Proactively updating your app with new features and APIs is a sound strategy to maintain its relevance and performance.
2. Offering Superior User Experiences
There's no magic formula for your app’s success and growth. Delivering superior user experiences (UX) is essential.
An exquisite user experience helps you:
- Enhance User Retention: A flawless UX can substantially enhance your app's user retention rate. Smooth navigation, minimal loading time, and user-friendly interface—all these factors influence the user experience and their likelihood to continue using your app.
- Increase Revenue: A superior UX can attract more users, leading to increased in-app purchases or ad revenue.
- Improve Ratings and Reviews: Happy users are more likely to leave positive reviews, contributing to better app store rankings.
Also Read: How Much Does it Cost to Build A Mobile App?
3. Increased ROI in the Long Run
Regularly updating your app can yield significant financial benefits, including maximizing your return on investment (ROI). It also opens opportunities to explore innovative ways to reduce costs and attract new users. How can regular maintenance contribute?
It’s straightforward: by addressing occasional bugs promptly, you can spread the costs of fixes over a longer period, optimizing your investment.
4. Curtailing Downtimes and Revenue Losses
Downtime can lead to substantial revenue losses. Major companies like Bank of America Online Banking, Blackberry, and Amazon Web Services have all experienced significant financial hits due to downtime.
By proactively managing potential downtimes, your team can minimize losses and create a more satisfying experience for your users.
Also Read: What Businesses Can Learn from the Iowa 2024 App Disaster?
5. Addressing Security Concerns
As technology advances, so do security threats. Regular maintenance and updates are crucial to ensuring your app remains secure against potential breaches and vulnerabilities. This also involves compliance with platform-specific privacy policies (like those from Google or Apple) and local regulations such as GDPR or CCPA.
6. Staying Relevant in the Market
To remain competitive, it’s essential to keep your app updated with the latest technological trends and user preferences. This may involve integrating new technologies, redesigning the interface, or introducing new features to keep your app relevant and engaging in a rapidly evolving market.
Types of Mobile App Maintenance
Emergency Maintenance: This type of maintenance is required when unforeseen problems arise unexpectedly and need immediate attention. Such issues are unpredictable and can significantly disrupt your app's functionality, making swift resolution essential to maintain a seamless user experience.
Perfective Maintenance: As user needs evolve and new mobile features gain popularity, your app must adapt to stay relevant. Perfective maintenance involves proactively responding to user feedback and modifying the app's source code to continually enhance the user experience.
Adaptive Maintenance: To keep your app aligned with changing technological environments, adaptive maintenance is crucial. This includes updating the app to ensure compatibility with new operating system versions, hardware upgrades, or other changes in the software environment that could impact the app's performance.
Preventive Maintenance: This maintenance strategy focuses on anticipating potential issues and reducing the app's complexity to improve maintainability. Preventive measures may involve code restructuring, optimization, and documentation updates to enhance the app's efficiency and prevent future problems.
Corrective Maintenance: Corrective maintenance addresses existing flaws, faults, and defects in the app's functions. This includes resolving issues related to design, coding, and application logic to ensure the app operates as intended.
As an app owner, understanding these maintenance categories is crucial for comprehensive planning and budgeting. When estimating the costs of app maintenance, consider these different maintenance types to ensure your app’s longevity and effectiveness.
How Much Does App Maintenance Cost?
When considering the costs involved in app maintenance, various factors such as server management, push notifications, and payment gateways come into play.
Once your app is live on platforms such as Google Play and the Apple App Store, it's essential to track key metrics like Daily Active Users (DAU), which highlight the number of app installations and engaged users. Additionally, monitoring Monthly Active Users (MAU) provides a broader overview of app engagement. High DAU and MAU figures typically indicate your app's success.
In the app development lifecycle, the maintenance stage comes after development and publication. This phase often incurs additional costs, which can reach up to 50% of the total development cost during the first year. This figure usually decreases to about 15-25% in the subsequent years.
Moreover, if your app supports multiple operating systems, such as Android and iOS, the maintenance costs might increase slightly. On average, app owners should expect to spend around $2,000 to $2,500 a month initially to keep the app running optimally.
A general guideline is to budget 20% of the initial development cost for maintenance. For instance, if your app development costs were $200,000, you can expect to spend about $40,000 per year on maintenance.
Let's explore some common recurring expenses during the maintenance phase:
Table 1. Expenses at the App Maintenance Stage
| Expense Head | Cost ($) per month |
| Servers | $100-$200 per month |
| Push Notifications | $10 |
| Payment Gateways | Up to $149 (or more), which also includes a certain percentage of each transaction |
| Emergency Maintenance | Depends on the nature of Emergency |
| App Stores Developer Fee | $25 at Google Play, $99 at Apple App |
Here are some more items that you need to keep in mind when taking the cost of app maintenance into account:
1. Hosting
The server cost for mobile apps and app hosting prices is a significant expense in app maintenance. You'll need to consider what kind of server your app requires and then calculate the associated hosting costs.
Depending on the type of app data, you can plan out the server resources accordingly. Determine if the app data is primarily text-based or static, or if it involves handling audio, video, and other large chunks of data being sent or received by users.
For more extensive data, you'll need more server CPU, memory, and disk space, which will lead to increased costs. An app hosting server can range in price anywhere from $70 to $320 per month, depending largely on factors such as the content, the number of active users, and projected growth.
There are multiple hosting options available, including cloud-based environments. Cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) are typically less expensive since you only pay for what you use, and the maintenance cost of the server itself is lower.
2. Analytics
Monitoring and analyzing mobile app bugs, crashes, and other glitches are essential, and tools like Google Analytics can provide the insights you need to make informed decisions.
Understanding your users’ preferences and expectations is crucial for making quick, data-driven decisions. While there are plenty of free tools available, some advanced tools that provide critical insights may come at a cost.
The process of monitoring and decision-making also involves a time investment, so it’s important to choose tools that align with your business needs.
3. Bug Fixing and Updates
Regular updates can help resolve and quickly fix bugs and enhance the UX. If you look at any app, then you’d find that there are updates for the app. The cost of the updates varies—and depends on a lot of factors.
Consider you have one bug that requires a quick fix in the line of code—it would cost you around $50. What if you need to update a functional aspect?
It could take you a couple of weeks to fix, and the costs could be around $1,000-$2,000. The prices are typically dependent on the size of the app and the nature of changes in the functionality. As an app owner, you’d need to consider the maintenance of such facets.
4. Third-Party
While developing your app, you may choose to use licensed technology at a fee. So anything in your app that comes from someone else involves a monthly cost. You’d need to consider calculating such third-party costs.
5. Customer Support
Let’s think of the movie experience, if you would have a sudden disruption in the movie screening—you’d have angry customers.
Similarly, if users have any complaints, then it would be great if they can voice their concerns and have a pleasant complaint resolution experience. You may consider investing in customer support, which will be an ongoing cost but can have benefits such as positive reviews.
The more feature-rich your application is—you could expect additional expenses. The costs of maintaining your mobile app would be dependent on various factors, including the app's functionality, and it is prudent that you budget for the expenses.
As you mull over bringing value through your mobile app usage, it would be best to chalk out and follow some of the best practices in the industry.
Best Practices for App Maintenance
With best practices, you can ensure that your users have a seamless and excellent app experience. Here’s what you can consider:
1. Adding New Feature Updates
It’s a great idea to monitor and check out improvement areas and new features that will add value to your app.
2. Keeping User Interface (UI) Updated
With trending styles and usage habits, you’d need to keep track and keep the user interface updated, which is essential to your app’s success. The more trendy your app, the happier your existing users are.
3. Monitoring Performance
It is critical to check your app performance. So look at the loading times, lags, and responsiveness issues and stay updated with the help of analytics reports.
It is vital that you know your retention and churn rates, analyze patterns of customer usage, and track your engagement and conversion rates.
4. Scheduling System Maintenance
When you schedule regular system maintenance, it is an excellent way to avoid missing out on issues or bugs. You can inform users beforehand about having the system down for maintenance and keep your app up-to-date.
As Peter Rojas, Co-founder of Engadget and Gizmodo, says, “In my opinion, the future of mobile is the future of everything.” As app owners, you have a responsibility to curate the future of mobile by ideating app maintenance and implementing it efficiently.
An Experienced Technology Partner for App Maintenance
If you want to create excellent app experiences—then you must plan out app maintenance. If you’re an app owner, who needs help with budgeting and maintaining your mobile apps, get in touch with us.
We are an award-winning team of web and mobile application developers with vast experience in emerging technologies like AI and IoT.
Let’s talk.
