How to Determine The Maintenance Cost of a Mobile App?

Are you looking for estimates of the cost of maintaining a mobile app that you intend to develop? Are you aware of the factors that influence the maintenance cost of a mobile app? If you are yet to find your answers, then here we are, the experts of Esolz Technologies Pvt. Ltd. to enlighten you through this blog.

Before we estimate the maintenance cost of a mobile app, we need to know why the maintenance of a mobile app is necessary?

Maintaining your mobile app is necessary since it is needed for its survival.

The maintenance of a mobile app will help you in calculating the profits in the long run. It has been proven that if you increase the retention rate of your app by only 5%, you will be able to enhance the profits of your business by 25-95%.

An app maintenance strategy is required for stuff like performance requirements, changes in design popularity, launching on new devices, launching on new operating systems, and many more.

And all of this needs to be in-line even before the app building process has begun. Therefore, you need to maintain your mobile app regardless of how well-developed it is.

Now, that we know the reason behind maintaining an app, let’s discuss the factors to consider for the estimation of the maintenance cost of a mobile app.

Factors worth considering for estimating the maintenance cost of a mobile app

The cost of maintaining a mobile app can be calculated at 15-20% of the total development costs behind the launch of the minimum viable product (MVP) model of your app.

Given below are the top 3 factors worth pondering over for estimating the maintenance cost of a mobile app:

The geographical location of the development team

The costs of developing a mobile app are different according to the geographical locations of the development team. The United States of America has the highest rates while Eastern and Central Europe are known for their low rates. Even, India has the lowest rates of app development but seems to outwit other nations.

Software complication

If your app has more screens and features, the maintenance cost of your mobile app will significantly increase. The app-building technology you use also plays a crucial role. If you build two separate native apps for Android and iOS, the cost of maintaining each app will be more than the use of React Native, which helps in cross-platform app development.

You need to factor in the integration of third-party services such as accounting systems, social media, or payment platforms while estimating the maintenance cost of a mobile app.

App design

To lower your app maintenance costs, you need to hire experienced software designers like us during phase one of the app-building process. If the design of your app is not satisfactory, then your maintenance costs can skyrocket in the long run.

Therefore, employ experienced developers from our team of cherry-picked individuals who know how to manage legacy code and design so that your app can be boosted during maintenance of the app.

Now, we know the factors behind the cost of maintaining an app. Let’s talk about the issue in-hand.

How to assess the cost of maintaining a mobile app?

The costs of the development of a mobile app and the maintenance cost all sum up the total cost of developing an app. Therefore, you need to be ready to shell out a few hundred bucks or more for the maintenance cost of a mobile app. The cost of maintaining an app varies from the type of app you are intending to build. On average, the cost of maintaining an app can be nearly 20% of your actual costs of the development of your mobile app.

Things to keep in mind while determining the cost of maintenance of an app

Given below are some factors that you need to bear in mind while estimating the costs of maintenance of a mobile app:

Analytics: Google Analytics offers insights into performance issues such as glitches, crashes, and other bugs. You are required to troubleshoot these problems while they arise, and for this, you need to hire a dedicated maintenance team.

Hosting: You are required to pay for database management and backend management for hosting your mobile app and for it to perform well. There are many hosting options available like a cloud-based environment. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the cheapest cloud services since you are required to pay only for the usage. AWS also provides low server maintenance and set-up costs.

Third-party services: If you are using third-party technologies in your mobile app, then you are required to pay for it every month. For example, you need to pay for a licensed third-party technology that you use.

Bugs and Updates: Updating your mobile app is necessary. As you may have noticed, Google rolls out updates for its apps on a timely basis. Therefore, your app also needs to come out with updates on a timely basis. These costs of updates rely on many factors.

If you have a bug in your coding, then solving it will cost you an amount. But, if you intend to update the entire features of the app that will require both time and effort.

Marketing: Marketing is necessary to put the word out for your new mobile app. Therefore, you need user engagement and marketing functionalities to get users and keep them hooked on your app.

You can do this for free, but if you pay a wee bit, you can get your name out there in the market. Our marketing team is adept at creating a custom marketing plan for your mobile application based on your budget.

Client Support: You need to address every user complaint to be successful with your app. Hire a dedicated employee from us who will respond to users and help you in getting good reviews. This will cost you but benefit you in the long run.

App Security: App security is also essential to provide the ultimate mobile app experience to your users. You need to factor in two areas – legally-imposed changes and ongoing security optimization. To make sure the sensitive user data doesn’t fall into wrong hands, developers are required to track all privacy updates of the third-party integrations.

If you leave an app update unidentified, that could be a violation of security. Therefore, you need to address these issues and this will cost a bit of money but will benefit you in the future.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to determine the maintenance cost of a mobile app, let’s discuss the ways how you can lower the costs.

Go for hybrid app development, it is cheaper to maintain and develop if budget is an issue, otherwise, if you want to provide the best possible user experience, go for native app development. You can incorporate the best features that the users will make use of. This will help in reducing the app maintenance cost. Hiring a dedicated team for maintenance will cost you a bit, but that will help you to focus on other important tasks of your business endeavours.

Last but not least, you can always talk to our experts to talk about the app maintenance strategy. And let us tell you a secret: the cheapest way to develop and maintain an app depends on choosing the right mobile app development company. Reach out to Esolz Technologies Pvt. Ltd. before making the final decision.