These days, there’s nothing that doesn’t need maintenance, even software! Sadly, there’s no magic recipe for immortality. Mainly, it’s the fact for mobile apps. With an ever-changing market and user needs, apps can turn into a failure. But, fret not, we’ve got your back! Here, we have focused on the depths of mobile app maintenance. You’ll learn everything from why mobile app maintenance is essential, types of maintenance services, the cost to maintain an app, tips to lower the cost, and whatnot. So, just sit back and get ready to dive deep to know keeping your app in the tuned shape!
Why Is Mobile Application Maintenance Important?
Investing in app maintenance gives you higher returns in the long run. Suppose you see a 5% hike in app retention rates, it will soar your profits from 25% to a whopping 95%. Thus, you can stay relevant in the competitive market by maintaining your app. There could be performance requirements to design changes, OS, or new device launch, a detailed strategy is the key to unlocking success. Just be consistent and everything good will follow
App Maintenance Cost Breakdown Based on Different Factors
Let’s know how the app maintenance cost is apportioned into segments. This way, you’d better learn where you will invest your money and how much. We have mentioned in the table below the costs linked to maintenance actions. This will help you calculate the expenses based on the maintenance service type for your app.
App Maintenance Type | App Maintenance Charges |
Hosting Charges | $70 to $320 Per Month |
Bug Fixing and Updates | $1000 to $2000 |
Functional Services | $4000 Per Year |
API Integration | $5000 Per Year |
IT Support | $10,000 Per Year |
Analytics | Free & Paid Services |
Payment Gateway | $149 Per Month |
Technical Intervention | $35 to $50 Per Hour |
What Are the Different Types of Mobile Maintenance Services?
Let’s learn about the type of app maintenance services that you can consider to maintain your app.
Emergency Maintenance
Yes, this is the ‘911’ for maintaining your app. You may sometimes encounter unexpected issues in your app that needs to be examined instantly for a smooth performance. No matter if it’s just a bug fix or a huge functional issue, emergency maintenance can assist you in this. Try setting up a team for this or you can outsource also.
Perfective Maintenance
Want to enhance your apps’ user experience? This type lets you closely examine user feedback and work on it to add new features and fix any bugs. However, the purpose is whether your app is meeting the ever-changing needs of the users or not.
Adaptive Maintenance
It becomes tough to keep updated with the latest tech know-how. As it leads to the implementation of hefty changes to your app’s environment and programming languages to make it useful and relevant to the users. Moreover, these services are the need of the hour to ensure your app doesn’t seem outdated to the users.
Preventive Maintenance
Your app might get affected by the errors. So, it’s essential to regularly look for the bugs and ways to fix them. This can be done by restructuring your app’s code resulting in better functionality and performance. Furthermore, this type ensures your app doesn’t get outdated.
Corrective Maintenance
These play a significant role when you need to keep a check on defects and faults to repair your app. Following this, issues like UI/UX design, appearance, app logic, code, and functionality are fixed.
Top Tips to Cut Down App Development and Maintenance Cost
Do the Research and Define Purpose
Let’s get down to nuts and bolts, folks! Before embarking on playing with numbers, you must understand your project. What’s interesting about your product? Will it be beneficial to the customers and how? There should be a proper plan, so let’s dive in.
Primarily, set some KPIs and decide what tools are the best suitable to measure them. This way you will understand how you will climb the ladder of success. All that depends upon your requirements, if you want users to spend more time on your app or high download count.
Thereafter, pick some books and do your market research. Above all, it’s important to know the needs of your audience and competitor’s approach. You just need to analyze your mobile app and ask yourself, “What unique are you offering in the market? How can you outshine your competitors?
Ultimately, start working on simplifying your features. It will save you lots in development, yet also make your app user-friendly. After all, who wants an app that’s filled up with unnecessary features, right?
Choose the Right Development Program
Let’s talk about platforms now! Selecting the correct platform while developing an app can really help in reducing your cost, time, and effort.
There are two options: Hybrid app development and Native app development.
Native apps, platform-specific apps let you form new versions of your app for every OS (Android, Windows, iOS, etc.). These apps perform faster and don’t take up much space on your device. Additionally, developers can learn to add the best features for a particular OS. Note that holding separate Android and iOS apps will cost higher.
Now, comes the cross-platform hybrid apps, which lets you build an app that works on multiple operating systems and saves you a lot. So, if you’re planning to offer multiple platform services with limited features, then go for hybrid app development.
Outsourcing App Development
Outsourcing really helps in saving you some serious cash when it’s a matter of maintaining your app. Stepping into outsourcing lets you use the expertise and resources that you need without skimping on quality. So, just sit back and relax and hand the project to the experts.
Go for an MVP
If you build an MVP, it indicates that your main focus is on those features that will make your app an instant hit with users, without facing any serious challenges. However, your app providing useless features can harm you with a high chance of app crashes, size, and loading time.
Hence, we recommend building a mobile app with meaningful features. Additionally, you can add some new features to the app based on the feedback you receive from the users. Keep a check on your competitors or any latest trends and then plan up your app upgrades, if it doesn’t hit you on the app performance.
Find Out Hidden Costs
There is a lot that goes into developing an app, be that from functional services to push notifications to infrastructure services. Yet, it’s just not about the basics. You will encounter some hidden factors that can immediately affect the cost to maintain an app. That can be access control, data storage, APIs, dashboard emulation, libraries, etc.
With the purpose to save money and be within budget, you should fully understand the cost factors involved in building your app. Try looking for a partner who knows how to negotiate hidden costs and maintenance expenses and make a correct estimate for your project. Don’t forget, a penny saved is a penny earned!
Utilize App Design Templates
Your app must have an intuitive UI/UX design, yet it can be expensive also. Certainly, there are several free UI templates and kits available online that can really save you a lot. Choose that suits you the best among the variety of designs and customize it later according to your needs. However, the minimalistic design works well to avoid any unnecessary cost to maintain an app.
The Importance of App Testing
Your app will be a hit definitely if you provide a hassle-free and smooth experience to the users. In case you fail to meet the user’s expectations, it may affect your business. As per the Global app testing, around half of the users are less likely to use an application again if they face any issues in its performance initially. Besides, the bad performance of an app can form negative brand perceptions from 88% of Americans. So, test your app properly and work on fixing the bugs from the early stages of development as it can help in cost reduction and boost revenue.
Implement User Feedback
Think wisely and start building a simple version of your app and collect user feedback. This way you can enhance your app and add necessary features to it while lowering the maintenance cost. With user-based feedback, you can build a successful product without any pressure on your budget.
Summing Up
If you think of maintaining your mobile app, understand it’s not just about fixing bugs, it’s a huge business priority to stay relevant and ahead in this competitive world. However, try to budget 15-20% for the annual maintenance of your apps’ quality.
Updating your app frequently can keep you at the top and offer deep insights into changing user needs. Besides, you unlock financial benefits such as low cost and high ROIs if you maintain your app regularly. So, don’t stop and follow the above tips and attract new users to scale up your business.
