The maintenance of a mobile application is one of the most crucial stages in its lifespan which is why a budget should be allotted separately to maintain the application. Mobile apps are the new trend nowadays. By end of 2025, the number of smartphone users will grow up to 7.49 billion, which will result in a mega opportunity for app developers.

When it comes to mobile apps, the focus is on the development (coding) phase. However, developers know the backend of the process, a major effort is required to design an application. Moreover, a process that involves publishing the app in Google Play or Apple App Store, and marketing it fashionably.

It is vital to maintain a mobile app and keep it up to date to avoid interruptions, major traffic breakdowns, glitches, etc. All this comes with additional costs. More importantly, if investments are not held in mobile app maintenance, then it can result in app failure leading to drastic results such as uninstalling the application.

Importance of mobile application maintenance

Business owners should always invest in long-term maintenance for their application to save their application from being uninstalled. Here are some important factors why applications should be maintained in optimal condition.

• Reducing uninstallation by updating the application

It is essential to know the requirements of users and curate features that reflect their likes and dislikes.

In 2017, over 20% of smartphone users uninstalled applications just because they did not logo off the application on their home screen. Notably, this proves that the users pay attention to detail, and if anything does not fit their expectations; they will delete the application. Hence monitor user preference by updating the application.

If your app rankings are decreasing, then the user may choose to remove the application from their stores. Therefore, update the application with new features.

• Providing a good user experience

Providing user experiences (UX) is the key to success for the application. Here are some advantages which a business owner may attain.

• Strong long-term relationships with users
• Positive user feedback and reviews
• Improve user trust
• Increase customer fidelity

• Security from cyber threats

The growth of the mobile app opens the door for cybercrimes therefore, there is also an increase in the quest for cybersecurity. As an app developer, securing applications and websites must be a priority.

When hackers are constantly searching for loopholes and finding new ways to steal personal and financial information developers must come up with solutions to tackle this problem. Update the applications with the latest security protocols.

• Staying viable in the Market

The app development field is quite competitive, with many apps with advanced features and functionalities being introduced to the market every now and then. As a way of staying relevant and beating the competitive market, it is crucial to keep maintaining an app by adding new features based on emerging trends and technologies. This will help you attract a new user base while achieving a higher retention rate. Existing users won’t find reasons to download other advanced apps when you have your app fully updated.

• Curbing downtimes and loss of revenue

The downtime of an app is when an app is inaccessible to users, and such an instance can be demotivating, especially when an app limits users from accessing or performing specific actions.

This will affect the overall user experience which translates to reduced productivity and loss of revenue. Maintaining your app regularly ensures the app is robust enough to handle any changing dynamics. App maintenance also helps you to identify and resolve possible issues that could cause downtime, leading to poor user experience and, then, finally, loss of revenue.

• Increasing Return on Investment

Good return on investment (ROI) is one of the solid objectives of mobile apps. The app needs to attract a new user base while retaining the existing ones for steady growth that will increase ROI.

Regular maintenance, in this case, is crucial as it helps in identifying and resolving bugs and issues which could be costly once the issues persist for long.

What’s more, app maintenance helps you identify irrelevant features that don’t add any value to users, remove them, and replace them with more advanced features to enhance the app’s functionality and overall performance.

• For top ranking

Updating an app regularly improves its ranking. In this regard, Google and Apple often prioritize regularly updated and well-maintained apps. What’s more, a ranking up attracts more users since the app’s functionalities and general performance are excellent due to regular updates.

By updating and maintaining an app more often, you get to realize what users need and prefer, thus helping you optimize your app performance accordingly for better ranking.

• Enhanced app compatibility

When you upgrade or change the operating systems of an app, it means third-party services and devices will be affected too, and this can lead to incompatibility issues, especially when dealing with new platforms.

You can overcome the compatibility challenges by updating and up which will help you identify and resolve any incompatibility issues beforehand for streamlined operations. What’s more, new and advanced devices with new features will always evolve in the market. It is vital to ensure your app is compatible with such devices for streamlined user experiences.

Types of Mobile application maintenance

• Emergency maintenance

In case of emergency, which implies the nature of the problems are impulsive, sudden, unpredictable, and unexpected. In such circumstances address the concerns immediately so the application does not suffer from any loss.

• Adjustable maintenance

With adjustable maintenance, keep in track of making changes in the application by updating it in optimal condition. Several adjustments require like working on the operating system or hardware or software ecosystem that would impact the application’s functionality.

• Obstructive maintenance

Obstructive maintenance indicates eradicating the occurrence of errors. The focus is on reducing complexities within the application and improving the optimization factor through code realignment, code optimization, and documentation updating.

• Preventive Maintenance

This is app maintenance, whereby you have the capacity to anticipate a specific issue or problem with the app functionality in the future and then take the needed measures to avoid such happenings.

Examples of preventive maintenance include restructuring your code, updating documentation, and app optimization. These measures help stabilize your app always, while eliminating the possibility of interruptions when using the app.

• Corrective Maintenance

Once the app is in the market, issues such as technical requirements, functionality, coding, logic, performance, and design are inevitable, and this greatly affects the overall functionality and performance of an app.

In this case, performing corrective maintenance and resolving existing issues enhances the app’s functionality and performance.

Mobile app maintenance costs

After publishing the application on Google Play Store or Apple App Store, examine the Daily Active Users (DAU) of your app. This will provide the stats of users who install and engage in your app.

Examine Monthly Active Users (MAU), which provides stats monthly. The basic formula is to have both DAU and MAU perform in optimal conditions for your app’s success.

In the app development lifespan, the maintenance part comes after the development and publishing part. Moreover, it is a necessary stage to keep the application running in the market.

Maintenance requires additional expenses. Therefore, the app maintenance costs may be considerably higher during the first year, which may be up to 50% of the total app development cost, then decrease to 25% for each year coming after that.

The expenses also depend on the nature of the operating systems used. For example, maintaining Android is less costly than iOS.

On average, an application owner will need to spend around $500 and $1000 a month on app maintenance costs to keep the app functioning in optimal condition. However, the market price may vary from region to region across the globe.

Here are things to keep in mind while maintaining an application.

• Hosting

The cost of mobile apps server is a critical expense. Decide what kind of server the application requires then calculate the hosting costs.

Type of data determines server cost check whether text-based, audio, or video-based data is shared by the user on the application. Additional data will lead to increased costs. A typical hosting server costs somewhere between 150$–300$ per month.

• Eliminating bugs

Constant updates help in resolving bugs and enhance UX. More importantly, to avoid uninstallation of the application, update the application which meets the need of the user. The cost of the updates varies on different factors.

The prices are dependent on the size or complexity of the application, and the nature of changes required. Moreover, the app owners need to be aware of the maintenance cost of regularly updating the application. A simple bug usually costs 50$ to fix.

• Customer service

Respect user complaints, it is a great gesture to allow them to voice their opinions. Consider investing in customer service, which will result in positive reviews from the user.

By bringing value to the application from adding customer service will result in additional cost, it is necessary to budget for these expenses.

In a nutshell, mobile app maintenance costs will vary, ranging between $20000 and $50000 per year, or even more since it is an ongoing activity. The price range is attributed to a number of factors that we will discuss in this section.

However, the table below summarizes the app maintenance actions and respective prize ranges.

Factors that impact the costs of maintaining a mobile app

Mobile app maintenance costs differ based on the factors described below:

• App’s size and complexity

Complex mobile apps often have more features and advanced functionalities; hence costly to maintain such apps. This is contrary to a simple or basic app with basic features and functionalities. A simple app doesn’t have a lot of integrations, dependencies, and features that will require more costs to maintain them.

• Security requirements

Different mobile apps are designed to deliver different functionalities. While some handle sensitive and confidential use data and transactions, some handle the basic data that isn’t that sensitive for completing specific actions.

Of course, apps that require sophisticated security auditing and monitoring processes will be costly compared to apps with basic data that don’t require extensive security measures. Advanced apps with higher security needs will require specialized experts and more resources to complete the security checks processes, hence more costs.

• Number of users

An app accommodating many users will be costly to maintain unlike an app with a few users. Well, you will need more resources to maintain an app with many users due to the large data volume generated in the process. What’s more, an app with more users will require more user support processes, hence the higher maintenance costs.

• Updating the app

Mobile apps are built on different platforms, i.e., iOS and Android. Some mobile apps, however, are compatible with both iOS and Android platforms. The costs of performing app maintenance differ based on the specific platform since the protocols, guidelines, tools, and resources used in this case are different.

• Frequency of updates

Depending on the nature of the app, you may need to perform regular and frequent updates. The more the number of updates required, the more resources are used, hence the more the costs.

This is especially true because, after every update, you will need to perform mobile app testing to ensure the effectiveness of the updated version and reliability in performance delivery. Besides, an app that requires frequent updates needs specialized expertise, time, and effort, hence more costs.

• Monitoring & supports

A customer-centered mobile app requires regular app support and maintenance. This means more resources, including human resources, infrastructure, and specialized tools to keep track of the app’s performance and stability.

This might call for extra staffing, especially if your app has a global userbase. Reaching users across different time zones means outsourcing more staff for wider coverage, and this means more costs.

• App Developer’s geographical location

You might need to higher your mobile app maintenance team based on the app’s requirements. Well, depending on the location of your maintenance team, the costs will vary widely due to differences in expertise, skills, quality services, culture, exchange rates, regulatory requirements, and labor rates.

For instance, choosing a mobile app maintenance team from advanced countries with advanced mobile app technology stack and specialized skills will attract more costs that are needed to maintain your app.

How to reduce mobile app maintenance costs

While mobile app maintenance costs can be extreme and go beyond your set budget, you can actually put in place measures to curb some of the expenses associated with maintaining your app. Here are practical tips that will enable you to save more as you facilitate your mobile app maintenance procedures:

• Have a maintenance plan

As mentioned before, the scope of mobile app updates and maintenance frequency impacts the costs of maintaining mobile apps. The activities are viable, especially for adding new features, enhancing the app security, fixing bugs, and updating the app to align with industry-specific guidelines.

During the process, errors can happen, which can cause more damage, hence more extra costs. That is why you need a mobile app maintenance plan to guide you on the scheduled tasks, priorities, and set goals.

Besides, with a maintenance plan, you can easily optimize resource utilization, enhance efficiency, and eliminate any associated risks.

Pro tip: use advanced tools and approaches like feedback, testing, and version control to ensure your strategy is successful.

• Select the appropriate development strategy

The development plan you choose impacts the entire mobile app maintenance process and related costs. Web, hybrid, and native are the development approaches available.

Hybrid apps rely on web technologies like JavaScript, CSS, and HTML and are compatible with different platforms. The only limitations they have are compatibility issues and not-so-good performance.

Native apps, on the other hand, are built for a defined platform which can be Android or iOS. Such apps deliver excellent user experience and overall performance. However, they follow a complex app maintenance process, plus they are costly.

Web apps are the simplest and cheapest to maintain. While they are optimized for mobile devices, they have limited access to some device features, thus limiting users from some functionalities.

So, as you select your development approach, make sure you can define your target audience, the core features of your app, and the goals you want to achieve. This will help you make the right decisions and save some maintenance costs when the development process of over.

• Optimize repeated costs

Some costs are recurring, and when not well-monitored and managed, they can become a large sum of costs. As part of reducing mobile app maintenance costs, make sure you choose a hosting provider who will help you achieve your set goals without overspending.

Most importantly, monitor your app’s performance under different scenarios, i.e., during peak and off-peak times. This will help you adjust resource utilization accordingly, thus saving more on maintenance costs.

Above all, automate repetitive tasks to optimize the recurring costs which will help you minimize workload while enhancing productivity.

• Track and evaluate the overall app performance

The performance of the app in terms of usability, stability, security, and speed impacts the overall costs of maintaining such an app.

When an app records poor performance continuously, it means poor user experience, which in turn equals bad reviews and reduced retention rates. Performing app maintenance on such an app can be costly since you will need more resources and skilled expertise.

You can avoid this by simply tracking and evaluating the overall performance of the app, tracking the key performance indicators using advanced tools, and using the insights collected to elevate the functionality of your application.

• Outsource and automate maintenance tasks

You will need human resources to perform the mobile app maintenance process. The entire process requires expert developers, managers, designers, and testers who can understand the different parts of the app.

Well, hiring such a big team separately can be costly. While you can also opt to use your in-house team, chances are you might lack some skillset within your team, hence the need to source extra experts, which can be costly at the same time.

Resolve all this by outsourcing application development company from Aalpha Information System, for advanced technology, friendly rates, and excellent service delivery.

The benefit of outsourcing such a team is that you get all the experts required for the task under one roof. You don’t need to source different talents differently, and this will save you on the costs of maintaining a mobile app.

• Educate and engage your users

User behavior impacts the overall costs of maintaining a mobile app. User behavior is all about how users engage with the app in terms of the most used features, frequency, and overall response to any changes made within the app.

You can educate users through different methods such as notifications, tutorials, surveys, and rewards. The goal is to make the effectiveness of the app known to users, including benefits and updates made. This, in turn, enhances user loyalty, thus reducing app maintenance costs and generating more ROI.

• Develop a scalable app

Developing a scalable app will reduce the overall costs required to maintain such an app significantly. A scalable app, in this case, is an app that adapts to the changes in user demands or tech advancements. This means you can adjust the app seamlessly to meet a specific functionality, thus creating a higher user retention rate and a good user experience. An app that is not scalable, on the other hand limits you from adjusting the app accordingly to meet the emerging requirements, thus a costly maintenance process for such an app.

• Collect user feedback

User feedback is vital in ensuring you create a user-centric mobile app. Besides, customer feedback will help you identify areas within the app that need more work. Instead of focusing on other irrelevant maintenance tasks, you keep your focus on the exact areas that need your attention, thus reducing mobile app maintenance costs significantly.

Conclusion

The mobile app maintenance process is key for every app, especially if the goal is to attract a large user base and make more profits. A well-maintained and updated app performs seamlessly, has advanced features and functionalities, and attracts the right audience, thus yielding more profits.

Back to You!

Are you looking for app maintenance at reasonable costs? Connect with our mobile app development company – Aalpha information systems, and get a free quote today!

Also check: software maintenance company | website maintenance costs|