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What Does It Cost to Maintain an App in 2026? A Complete Enterprise Budget Guide

Saurabh Singh
CEO & Director
November 25, 2025
Key Factors to Increase or Decrease the App Maintenance Cost
Table of Content
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Key takeaways:

  • App maintenance costs 15-20% of total development cost annually
  • First-year maintenance can reach 50% of initial development cost
  • Regular maintenance increases ROI and user retention significantly
  • Apple and Google remove or hide outdated apps, and Play policy updates now roll out frequently.

Mobile apps have become the backbone of modern business operations, changing how companies interact with customers and manage their services. But here’s what most entrepreneurs don’t get: getting your app into the store is just the start, not the finish line.

Think about it this way. Is it possible that you buy a car and never change the oil? Absolutely not! The same thing goes for your mobile app. The digital marketplace is brutal, and users have zero patience for apps that don’t work right.

The numbers show something pretty interesting: Google Play Store currently hosts nearly 1.58 million apps, while Apple App Store features roughly 2.095 million apps across different categories. Both platforms regularly kick out thousands of low-quality apps.

But here’s the kicker: these changing numbers prove that just launching your app doesn’t guarantee survival. Your app’s success depends big time on what happens after launch. This means constant improvements, regular updates, and smart scaling based on user feedback.

Every successful app needs ongoing maintenance to stay relevant. We’re talking about bug fixes, security patches, user experience improvements, and competitive feature updates. Most business owners get shocked when they find out that mobile app maintenance costs typically eat up 15-20% of what they originally spent on development every year. But this little CapEx in app maintenance pays dividends by protecting your app’s performance, improving retention, and keeping you ahead of competitors.

In this blog, we’ll break down exactly how much does it cost to maintain an app in 2026 and share proven ways to keep those expenses under control. But first, let’s dig into why maintenance isn’t optional anymore.

Must Read: How Much Does It Cost to Develop an App in 2026?

Your app’s survival depends on what happens after launch. Get our proven maintenance framework used by KFC, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, IKEA and global brands to ensure long-term market success.

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Why Maintaining and Updating Mobile Apps Matter

App maintenance isn’t optional anymore in today’s competitive world. It’s essential for survival. App stores are enforcing stricter quality, privacy, and security standards, while users expect faster experiences, cleaner interfaces, and seamless compatibility with new OS versions. If an app fails to evolve, it risks losing visibility, users, and revenue.

The Ground Reality of 2026

The numbers paint a stark picture. Industry analysis shows Google removed 1.1 million apps from the Play Store in Q2 2024 alone. That’s a staggering 34% delisting rate compared to the usual 8% average. Most shocking part? 74% of these delisted apps were basically “abandoned.” They hadn’t seen updates in over two years.

This aggressive cleanup kept going throughout 2024. TechCrunch reported that Google Play lost nearly 47% of its total apps. The platform dropped from 3.4 million to around 1.8 million applications.

Meanwhile, industry research shows that apps that aren’t regularly updated experience significantly lower user retention rates, with some studies indicating drops of up to 67% compared to frequently updated applications.

That’s why understanding how much does it cost to keep an app running becomes crucial when you realize that apps with consistent update schedules see 2.5x higher retention over six months.

How Much Does It Cost to Maintain an App?

Understanding mobile app maintenance costs in 2026 requires looking beyond generic estimates. Your investment will vary significantly based on your app’s complexity, user base, and strategic objectives. On average, most businesses spend 15–20% of their initial development cost every year on maintenance. Here’s what you need to know for accurate budget planning.

2026 Cost Breakdown by App Complexity

The maintenance investment you’ll need depends heavily on your app’s sophistication and business requirements:

  • Simple Apps

Simple apps like small tools, calculators, or basic content pages usually don’t ask for much once they’re out in the world. A few bug fixes here and there, maybe an OS version check, and some polishing. Most businesses spend somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 a year on these.

  • Complex Apps

More feature-heavy apps like e-commerce, social feeds, or anything running on third-party APIs, naturally cost more. They need more testing, more performance tuning, and more security checks. These can easily land in the $10,000 to $20,000 per year bracket, sometimes even more if the app sees a lot of traffic or changes often.

  • Enterprise-Level Platforms

Enterprise apps are in a league of their own. Banking apps, healthcare apps, SaaS platforms… these come with strict rules, audits, heavy backend loads, and large user bases. It’s normal for their yearly maintenance to cross $20,000 and go all the way up to $40,000, depending on scale, integrations, and compliance.

Monthly vs Annual Cost Planning

Some companies prefer planning the expenses month to month instead of looking at one big number. Most apps fall somewhere between $500 and $4,000 per month. A good part of this goes toward cloud hosting, monitoring tools, backups, and regular updates. None of these change much unless your app suddenly grows.

When you look at it yearly, these same apps usually end up in the $5,000 to $50,000 range, depending on how often you ship updates and how complex the backend is. The monthly view just spreads the cost out so it feels easier to manage.

Fixed vs Variable Costs

Certain expenses are predictable like app store fees, hosting bills, and analytics tools. They stay mostly the same throughout the year. What changes the number is when you add new features, redesign screens, or run big security updates. These things aren’t routine, so the cost jumps only when you decide to make improvements or when something breaks unexpectedly.

Maintenance TypeYear 1 (of Dev Cost)Year 2+ (of Dev Cost)Annualy Range
Simple App25–35%15–20%$5,000–$10,000
Complex App45–50%25–30%$10,000–$20,000
Enterprise App50–60%30–35%$20,000–$40,000+

Large-scale apps for enterprises usually have one more layer of cost that includes round-the-clock monitoring, failover systems, automated alerts, and scheduled security reviews. These aren’t optional for apps that deal with sensitive data or operate across regions. While they do add to the yearly budget, they also prevent huge losses from downtime or security issues.

So, it is advisable to consult a reputed mobile app development company to get a rough estimate of app maintenance costs and plan your budget accordingly.

What Factors Affect the Cost of App Maintenance?

There are several factors affecting app maintenance cost that impacts the overall investment. These factors include fixing bugs, introducing new features and functionalities, focusing on system updates, and so on. Let’s discover the essential factors that determine the average app maintenance cost.

Factors Affecting the App Maintenance Cost

Bug Fixing and Updates

Regular app updates help you fix bugs fast and make your interface better. Getting a handle on app maintenance costs through regular updates helps you plan your budget better. Update costs change based on stuff like how complex your app is and what needs fixing.

For example, if your app has a bug that needs a quick fix, you’re looking at around $50. But if you need to change how something works, that takes a few weeks and costs anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000.

Hosting Maintenance

Your hosting cost depends on the number of users coming in, how heavy your app features are, and how much data you handle every day. Some apps run cheaply, around the $70–$320 a month range, but others can go higher if traffic spikes or you’re running real-time features. It’s one of those costs that quietly grows if your app becomes more active.

Analytics and Monitoring

App bugs, crashes, and glitches need constant watching to keep your app running smooth. You need analytics tools like Google Analytics to get the real scoop on how users behave and how your app performs. This helps you make smarter decisions. There are tons of free and paid tools out there with different price tags. They give you the lowdown on what your users want and expect.

Recommended: Which Analytics Tool Is Right For Your App?

Development Team Location

Where your team is based plays a surprisingly big role in the overall cost of maintaining an app. Developers in the US or Europe charge more than teams in regions like India or the Middle East. It’s simply because of different cost structures and experience levels. This is why two companies building almost the same app can have very different maintenance budgets

Frequent UI/UX Improvements

There is no better way to ensure the success of your app than to deliver seamless user experiences. With ever-changing user habits and market trends, you need to keep updating the UI/UX design of your apps. The more up-to-date your app is, the happier your users are.

app gif

AI and Automation Integration Costs

Adding AI to your maintenance plan is both a chance to save money and a big upfront cost. AI monitoring and automated fixes can cut down manual work by up to 60%. But getting enterprise-level systems set up costs $25,000-$75,000 to start. Then you have ongoing costs for keeping the machine learning models running and processing data. That adds another $5,000-$20,000 per year, depending on how much data you have and how complex your setup is.

Compliance and Regulatory Costs

Dealing with regulations got way more complicated and expensive in 2026. GDPR compliance now needs fancy consent management systems and regular check-ups. Setting this up costs $15,000-$50,000, plus another $5,000-$15,000 every year to keep monitoring everything.

Eight new US state privacy laws just made things worse. Each one has different rules, potentially adding $3,000-$10,000 per year in compliance costs depending on where your users are.

Furthermore, industry-specific rules make it even messier. Healthcare apps need HIPAA compliance that costs $20,000-$100,000 annually. Apps for kids need COPPA compliance, which runs $10,000-$30,000 for special development and monitoring. Payment processing apps need PCI DSS compliance, adding $15,000-$40,000 per year for security measures and audits.

Cloud Infrastructure Modernization

A lot of apps are moving from older server setups to serverless or edge-based systems. The shift can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 depending on complexity. The good part is that once you move, you usually save money because serverless hosting charges only for what you use.

But there are extra costs too. Things like cross-region traffic fees, which can add $500 to $5,000 a month, and higher data retrieval costs from edge locations, which can go up by 20–40% compared to traditional setups.

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The Real-World Impact of Maintaining a Mobile App in 2026 and Beyond

In 2026, the apps that win are the ones that evolve. Maintenance has become a business advantage, not an afterthought, shaping user trust, performance, security, and long-term ROI. What you don’t update eventually becomes what holds you back. The way you maintain your app today directly shows up in your ratings, retention, and revenue tomorrow.

Your Users Notice Everything: When your app crashes, loads slowly, or feels outdated, users don’t just get frustrated. They leave. And they don’t come back quietly either. They write bad reviews, tell friends about it, and delete your app completely. Regular maintenance keeps things running smooth and users happy.

Staying Ahead of Others: The app world is packed right now. Competition gets brutal. Your competitors let their apps sit there getting stale while you keep updating and improving. That gives you a real advantage. Users always go for apps that feel fresh and actually work.

Protecting Your Investment: You already spent time and money building this thing. Maintenance protects that investment, basically. A well-maintained app keeps bringing in money, gets new users, and builds your brand up. Ignore it and you’re just watching your investment crumble.

Security Can’t Be Ignored: Cyber threats change constantly. Hackers keep looking for ways in. Security updates aren’t just smart practice. They’re absolutely essential for protecting user data and keeping trust. One breach destroys years of work and reputation building efforts.

Related Read: How to Recover From a Failed App Project

Common Pitfalls of Ignoring App Maintenance

Not putting money into app maintenance, scalability, and security are the main reasons your app fails and gets kicked out of app stores. With tech moving crazy fast and users changing what they want all the time, your app has to keep up. Otherwise, chances are your app will crash and burn.

Most business owners assume they can “build once and forget,” but mobile apps don’t work that way. It’s similar to buying a high-end car and skipping basic upkeep; it may run for a while, but the damage later is far more expensive.

The Pitfalls of Not Maintaining an App

Drives Up the OpEx (Operational Expenses)

Here’s where things get expensive fast. Emergency fixes cost 3-5x more than planned updates due to urgency, testing, and expedited review submissions. Think about it: when your app crashes during peak business hours, you’re not just paying for the fix. You’re paying for:

  • Developers working overtime or weekends
  • Expedited app store review processes
  • Lost revenue during downtime
  • Potential customer churn
  • Brand reputation damage

And then there’s the compliance nightmare. GDPR and HIPAA fines for non-compliant apps can exceed $100,000 per incident. Recent data shows that HIPAA violations alone can result in fines ranging from $127 to $1.5 million annually, depending on the severity and willful neglect. Meanwhile, GDPR fines have reached €6 billion across 2,590 cases by September 2025.

Increases Uninstalls

Apps with annoying bugs or crashes often drive users away. Similarly, if an app does not offer updated information, top-notch security, and advanced functionalities, the users’ experience is not good with the app, and they may even uninstall it. An application with flaws, data breach threats, or inconveniences pushes users to click the ‘Uninstall’ button. App maintenance and scalability help increase user retention rates by solving emerging problems and improving the app’s performance.

Worsens User Experiences

You don’t just want people to download your app. You want them to have the best user experience because delivering great user experience is essential for long-term relationships and app growth.

But here’s the thing. Not monitoring and updating your app makes user experiences worse. This decreases engagement and drives people away from what you’re offering. Unhappy users don’t stick around. They give bad ratings and negative feedback instead.

Must Read: User Experience vs. Customer Experience: Here’s the difference

Leaves You Far Behind in the Competition

Millions of apps in the market compete with one another to gain users’ attention. Of course, a user can’t download and use all of them. If you don’t upgrade and scale your app constantly, your users will find no good reasons to use your app and move to your competitors, leaving you far behind in the competitive world.

Recommended: How Mobile Application Maintenance a Key to Your App’s Success?

Increases the Risk of Data Breaches and Cyber Attacks

With tech constantly getting better for mobile apps, hackers are getting smarter too. Data breaches and attacks happen more often now. If you don’t maintain your app with the latest security stuff, you’re asking for trouble.

Hackers spend all day looking for weak spots in apps. Once they find a way in, they steal your data and mess up your whole system. This is exactly why you need to ensure the security of your app and keep your users’ personal info safe.

You may like reading: How to Build a Financial App with Proactive Security Measures?

Reduces ROI in the Long Run

Not updating and keeping up your app regularly can hurt your ROI down the road and make getting new users way more expensive. Once your app goes live, you’ll probably run into bugs pretty often, and not keeping an eye on your app will make fixing those bugs cost more. Also, if you don’t stay on top of things, you might hit a technical problem that’ll bump up your average mobile app maintenance costs.

2026 Technology Trends Affecting Mobile App Maintenance Costs

The landscape of app maintenance is being revolutionized by emerging technologies that promise to slash costs while improving reliability. Understanding these trends isn’t just helpful; it’s essential for staying competitive in 2026.

Related: How to Lower Mobile App Frontend Maintenance Cost

AI-Powered Maintenance Automation

AI is changing how we handle app maintenance. Instead of just fixing problems when they happen, we can now predict and prevent them. AI-driven app maintenance tools look at how people use your app and check system logs to spot patterns. This helps catch potential problems before they mess things up for users.

Automated fixes and constant monitoring are becoming normal now. The savings are pretty impressive: automated systems cut emergency fixes by 40%. They find and solve issues without needing people to step in. This means way fewer middle-of-the-night emergency calls and maintenance you can actually plan for.

Also Read: How to Build an AI App? Steps, Features, Costs, Trends

Cloud Infrastructure Evolution

Cloud hosting is shifting toward serverless and edge-based models that lower long-term maintenance effort and cost. Serverless platforms use a pay-as-you-go model, so you only pay for actual compute time instead of reserved servers.

Edge computing processes data closer to users, reducing latency, bandwidth use, and backend load. Together, these approaches help cut hosting costs to $70–$320 per month and reduce technical debt by removing the need for heavy manual infrastructure management.

Must Read: Why Enterprises Should Move to Serverless Computing

DevOps and CI/CD Maturity

Modern DevOps practices, automated testing, and CI/CD pipelines significantly reduce maintenance costs by preventing regressions and catching issues earlier. Enterprises with mature DevOps pipelines report up to 30–45% lower yearly maintenance effort compared to teams that rely on manual deployments.

Observability & Monitoring Tools

Advanced observability platforms like Datadog, New Relic, and Firebase Performance Monitoring also impact maintenance budgets. These tools reduce debugging hours, improve response times, and help teams identify memory leaks, crash loops, and API failures faster, lowering both cost and downtime.

Recommended: Power of Mobile Edge Computing

Best Practices for Smart App Maintenance

You must  follow the best practices to make sure your app maintenance works well and gives your users an awesome app experience. These practices help your team prevent issues early, manage updates smoothly, and maintain a positive user experience.

practices to make sure your app maintenance works well and gives your users an awesome app experience. These pract

Keep Maintenance at the Core of App Development

The consideration of how much does it cost to maintain an app is highly integral. Thus, remember to always consider app maintenance from the very start while creating an app. This means picking a mobile platform for app development that’s easy to grow with and uses current tech that won’t become outdated after you finish building.

Plus, you need to put money into security, performance, and other kinds of testing that’ll help you with app maintenance and support down the road.

Must Read: Best Platform for App Development

Take Care of Scalability

Your app needs to be built strong enough to handle more users as you grow. When your user base gets bigger, their needs change too. You’ll probably need to add new features and improve what you already have.

If you skip doing this, it will lead to slowdowns, crashes, and higher maintenance costs when your user base expands.

Stick to Your Development Team

When working with an app development team, make sure to stick with it for OpEx also. If you hire new app developers every time, they will need time to get acquainted with your project and learn about the technologies used.

On the other hand, when your app is maintained by the same team that created it, the process is rather quick and easy, and we get reduced mobile app maintenance costs. Your developers know what needs to be changed once a new operating system version is out or a new feature is introduced.

The table below outlines the cost of hiring a development team across various regions.

RegionHourly Rate
North America$70-$100
Western Europe$50-$80
Eastern Europe$30-$50
Asia-Pacific$20-$40
South America$25-$45
Middle East$30-$60
Africa$20-$35
Australia/New Zealand$60-$90

Use Analytics Tools

Once your app goes live, use the right analytic tools to see how people actually use it. This shows you which features they love and which ones they ignore completely. Adding new stuff based on what users tell you keeps them around and interested.

Data analytics help your team figure out exactly where to make changes and improvements. These app maintenance best practices are what keep apps successful long-term.

Fix Bugs Timely

If you don’t keep a check on your app and fix bugs on time, you will drive the users away. Accumulated bugs will lead to your app crashing and also multiply your expenses. Therefore, you must look for technical issues or bugs and fix them immediately. Keep track of user feedback and reviews to address issues or complaints efficiently.

Recommended: Proven Mobile App Testing Strategies for Reliable Apps

Schedule System Maintenance

Scheduling regular system maintenance is the best solution to avoid missing out on issues or bugs. It also ensures the smooth functioning of your app. Also, make sure to inform your users about the scheduled maintenance beforehand.

It will help them stay prepared for such situations, so they will not get frustrated when you unexpectedly hit your users with a “System down for maintenance” message.

Types of App Maintenance Services

Application maintenance is an ongoing process of updating and re-evaluating existing applications to scale your business and maximize profitability. Understanding how much does it cost to maintain an app through different service types helps you budget effectively for long-term success.

Thus, if you want your business to stay ahead of the competition, you must hire mobile app support and maintenance services to improve your application. A reliable app development company offers different types of mobile app maintenance services that include fixing bugs, adding new features, removing unnecessary ones, introducing system updates, and much more. Some such app maintenance services are mentioned below.

Types of App Maintenance Services

Emergency Maintenance

As the name implies, this type of maintenance service is required during an emergency. The issues or errors would be sudden and unexpected, making you take immediate action to address and resolve them quickly to deliver a seamless user experience.

Cost Range: Emergency maintenance typically costs 3-5 times normal rates because everything needs to happen fast. You’re paying for overtime developer costs, rushed testing, and getting your app store reviews bumped to the front of the line. Standard rates of $100-200 per hour jump up to $300-1,000 per hour when emergencies hit.

Adaptive Maintenance

This kind of app support keeps track of changes all the time to make sure your product stays current. Lots of things can mess with how your app works. Software updates, new hardware, security threats – they all affect performance. Apps that don’t get regular updates become old and useless pretty fast.

Cost Range: Simple apps usually cost $10,000-$30,000 per year to keep updated. Complex apps like online stores need updates every few months though. These can run $50,000-$100,000+ annually, depending on how many systems they connect to and what platforms they run on.

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance services offer regular app updating support in which developers eliminate the feasibility of error occurrence. The focus is on reducing app complexity and improving the maintainability factor through code optimization, code restructuring, and updation of documents.

Cost Range: $5,000-$20,000 annually for standard preventive maintenance. AI-driven app maintenance systems range from $15,000-$40,000 annually but can reduce emergency incidents by up to 40%, providing significant long-term cost savings.

Corrective Maintenance

The whole point here is fixing problems, bugs, and broken stuff in your app. This maintenance also covers errors in your code, design issues, and when your app logic gets messed up.

Cost Range: It can cost you around $2,000-$15,000 per year, depending on how complex your app is and how often bugs show up. For example, simple bug fixes run $50-$500 each while complex problems can cost $1,000-$5,000 per fix.

Perfective Maintenance

Perfective maintenance service focuses on meeting the ever-changing needs of users. It considers user feedback and takes care of functional modifications in the source code, offering a great user experience.

Cost Range: You will need around $8,000-$25,000 per year for making features better and improving user experience. Adding big new features can run you anywhere from $5,000-$50,000 each, depending on how tricky they are and how long they take to build.

Don't pay 3-5x emergency rates when issues strike. Our comprehensive maintenance strategies prevent costly surprises and keep your app running smoothly year-round.
Stop reactive maintenance from draining your budget. Partner with our experts who deliver proactive solutions that prevent issues before they impact your users and revenue.

Proven Tips on How to Lower App Maintenance Costs?

While there are various factors that affect the cost of app maintenance, there are certain ways that developers can use to cut down the expenses in mobile app maintenance. Business owners frequently wonder how much does it cost to maintain an app while seeking cost-effective strategies. Here’s how to reduce app maintenance costs effectively:

Tips to Lower App Maintenance Costs

Invest in Cross Platform App

While choosing the platform for app development, you have two options – native and cross-platform frameworks. Native apps are platform-specific, requiring multiple native apps for different operating platforms like Android, iOS, or Windows. On the other hand, cross-platform apps can run on various operating systems, saving you time and cost to maintain different apps.

Focus on Building MVP First

The minimum viable product (MVP) development provides the smallest possible solution to the issue you are trying to address, with basic functionalities. It helps you comprehend your users’ needs, gather their feedback, and modify the final version accordingly. You can also observe your competitors or trends and upgrade your app accordingly. So, to keep the app development and maintenance costs down, you should consider developing an MVP first.

Implement Agile Development Methodology

Agile app development methodology delivers products in short cycles (sprints), which helps you get users’ feedback early and often, reducing the need for major updates. Also, agile development requires less documentation than traditional development methodology, which can further cut down costs.

Discuss Strategy with App Development Partner

A reliable mobile app development company can offer high-quality app maintenance services whenever needed. You can discuss all the expenses related to app maintenance with the service provider, and they help you know the hidden costs, plan your budget and make informed decisions.

These app maintenance best practices ensure you’re getting the most value from your investment.

Quick Note to Remember

All the cost ranges mentioned in the blog for app maintenance aren’t fixed. They change a lot based on how much you spent building the app, what features you add later, what industries you operate in and how fast your user base grows. Think of this as a general picture, not a rulebook.

Appinventiv: An Experienced Tech Partner for App Development and Maintenance

Choosing the right team for app maintenance matters more than most people realize. It’s not just about fixing bugs or updating a screen or two; you need to partner with an experienced mobile app development services provider who understands how your product behaves in the real world, how your users think, and what your business expects in the long run.

That’s the space Appinventiv has been working in for over a decade, backed by 1,600+ experts who have delivered 3,000+ digital products across industries. With a 97% client satisfaction rate and 500+ legacy processes transformed, we’ve seen what it takes to keep apps stable and future-ready.

Our experience spans large-scale, high-traffic consumer apps, including major global brands like such as KFC, Adidas, IKEA, and KPMG, demonstrating our ability to handle enterprise-scale maintenance challenges. For example:

The results?

  • 30% increase in conversion rate
  • 7-second improvements in screen transition time
  • 50,000+ downloads

We redesigned the UI/UX of Pizza Hut

Both of these projects went far beyond “making the app look better.” They involved improving performance, managing backend integrations, cleaning up the architecture, and making sure the platforms could scale as demand increased; the kind of work that directly affects long-term maintenance.

Over the years, we have also received multiple recognitions like:

This reflects how deeply our work extends into enterprise-grade engineering. Whether your priority is performance, compliance, stability, or preparing your app for the next few growth cycles, our team supports the full product lifecycle, from urgent fixes to long-term maintenance planning. You focus on scaling the business while we keep the app running smoothly behind the scenes.

No matter you want to upgrade your legacy application or just want to know how much does it cost to maintain an app in 206, connect with Appinventiv today for all your app maintenance needs.

FAQs

Q. How much does it cost to maintain a mobile app?

A. There is no fixed price to answer, “how much does it cost to maintain an app”. App maintenance usually costs 15-20% of what you spent building it every year. Remember, emergency fixes cost 3-5 times more than planned maintenance, so planning your budget smart saves you money down the road.

To get an actual understanding of how much you should spend on mobile app maintenance, discuss your pain points with us.

Q. Why app maintenance is important?

A. Think of app maintenance like car maintenance – skip it, and you’ll pay dearly later. Google removed 1.1 million apps in Q2 2024 alone, with 74% being “abandoned” apps that hadn’t updated in over two years. Without regular maintenance, you’ll face security breaches, user complaints, crashes, and ultimately app store removal. Plus, well-maintained apps see 2.5x higher user retention over six months. It’s not optional anymore – it’s survival in today’s competitive marketplace.

Q. How can businesses reduce app maintenance costs?

A. Smart businesses use a few tricks to cut costs.

  • First, build cross-platform apps instead of separate native ones for each platform – this cuts your maintenance in half right there.
  • Next, start with an MVP to see what users actually want before blowing money on fancy features.
  • Use agile development for shorter, cheaper update cycles.
  • Stick with your original dev team since they already know your code inside and out.

Q. How can Appinventiv help with app maintenance?

A. Appinventiv brings over a decade of expertise in maintaining apps for global brands like KFC, Domino’s, and Adidas. We’ve helped KFC achieve a 22% conversion rate increase through smart maintenance strategies.

Our team of 1,600+ technology experts handles everything from emergency fixes to strategic feature evolution. We specialize in compliance-heavy industries, too – we’ve delivered 500+ digital health platforms with HIPAA compliance.

Q. What services are included in mobile app maintenance?

A. Mobile app maintenance breaks down into five main areas.

  • Emergency maintenance deals with sudden crashes and critical bugs that need fixing right away.
  • Adaptive maintenance keeps your app working with new OS updates and platform changes.
  • Preventive maintenance means cleaning up code and doing regular check-ups to catch problems before they bite you.
  • Corrective maintenance fixes bugs, design issues, and logic errors when you find them.
  • Finally, perfective maintenance adds new features based on what users want and what’s hot in the market.
THE AUTHOR
Saurabh Singh
CEO & Director

With over 15+ years of experience driving large-scale digital initiatives, Saurabh Singh is the CEO and Director of Appinventiv. He specializes in app development, mobile product strategy, app store optimization, monetization, and digital transformation across industries like fintech, healthcare, retail, and media. Known for building scalable app ecosystems that combine intuitive UX, resilient architecture, and business-focused growth models, Saurabh helps startups and enterprises turn bold ideas into successful digital products. A trusted voice in the industry, he guides leaders on aligning product decisions with market traction, retention, and long-term ROI.

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